


A Safe Pair of Hands

by W1tchmom



Category: Original Work, silent film - Fandom
Genre: Buster Keaton - Freeform, F/M, Somewhat Au?, fix-it fic!, im a romance author and it shows okay, non-french maid situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-06-16 03:31:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 45,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15428079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/W1tchmom/pseuds/W1tchmom
Summary: When Dot comes to work at the Italian Villa, she's expecting a quiet job of making beds and mending stockings. She's not expecting to walk into a den of shifting alliances and secrets.





	1. Chapter One

"Dorothy Addams." Mrs. Keaton pronounced. Though, as she sat in state on the upholstered chair she looked every bit a Talmadge.

"Dot. I go by Dot." 

"Dot. Not Dotty?"

"Just Dot, Ma'am," the girl gave a short bow of her head and fidgeted with her hands, unsure if she should hold them in front of her or behind. She tried not to glance at Mr. Keaton, who was sitting off to the side and seemed busy with papers in his lap. Dot hadn't expected to actually see him at the interview and his presence had set her on edge.

"You have experience working as a maid?"

Dot cleared her throat. "Not much, ma’am. I've worked as a typist, and in the mills. But I'm quick to learn." Her voice sounded thin and unpersuasive in her own ears.

"Where are you from, Dorothy?" Mrs. Keaton asked.

"Michigan." 

From the corner of her eye she saw Buster look up.

"Whereabouts in Michigan?" He asked. Dot wasn't sure what she expected his voice to sound like, but it certainly wasn't the baritone that had just suddenly taken such an interest in her interview.

"Upper Peninsula, sir." She answered, not quite meeting his gaze.

"Hm," he said, looking back down at whatever he was doing over there.

"Why so far from home?" Mrs. Keaton asked after glancing sharply at her husband.

"Money, miss. Not very romantic but there it is. My mother's too frail to work so it's up to me to send money back for her and my siblings. California pay is like a fortune in the little town I'm from. So I thought...I'd give it a go here and see what happens."

"Not hoping to make the jump from maid to actress then?" She asked pointedly.

Dot chuckled. "No Ma'am. Not me. I just want to keep my head down and work for my family best I can."

Mrs Keaton seemed unconvinced, but Dot noticed that Buster was watching her again, the papers in his lap forgotten.

"And what do you know about housekeeping?" Mrs. Keaton asked

"Um. Just what any girl would know. But, like I said, I'm a quick student. I'm sure I could keep up with whatever you'd need of me."

"Well Dorothy, we have what we need. You'll know by the end of the week."

With that, Dot was dismissed. She curtseyed to the diminutive but nonetheless imposing woman first, then to Buster who wore what seemed to be an attempt at an encouraging smile. It looked odd on his face. 

As Dot walked through the lofty foyer of the mansion and out the heavy front door towards the street, she wondered if Natalie's pointed refusal to use her nickname meant that she'd made a bad impression. The possibility that she’d lost herself the opportunity to get out of the sweaty cotton mill she'd been slaving at for months made her almost want to cry. She bit back that bitter thought and jogged the rest of the way to the taxi that had dropped her off and was waiting for her.

 

"I liked the one from Michigan. Dotty, wasn’t it?" Buster said later that evening over a cold supper of sandwiches and apple salad on the balcony.

"Of course you did." Natalie said bitingly.

Buster considered not taking the bait, but there was nothing else to do and he hated a tedious evening.

"What do you mean by that, Nat?" He asked, tilting his head innocently.

"I just mean, of course you like her. What's not to like? She's young and cute and you two can bond over the fact that you both came from the middle of nowhere. But she's too young for you." Natalie took another bite of her sandwich and never once looked at him as she spoke.

"Too young for me?"

"You know what I mean."

Buster let a slow grin spread over his lips as he stared at his wife's stern profile. "Well, hell, if I'd known you were interviewing sister-wives I'd have paid closer attention."

Natalie scoffed but let the subject drop. They ate in silence as the sun set. Even at the end of the day it was still hot, and it was only May. Buster didn't look forward to a scorching summer, but out on the balcony they could catch a breeze at least. The slight wind lifted the ends of his hair and he closed his eyes for a moment, listening to his wife's prolonged silence.

"A girl who is working to support her family will work harder than one who's just looking for a bit extra dress money," he said after a time. "Maids are your business, Nat, but I'm not crazy about the idea of wasting time and money on another silly girl who gets herself fired after a month."

"No silly girls. I'll make note of it."

"Mm. See that ya do," he mumbled lazily as he stood up, reaching in his pocket to retrieve a cigarette and lighter. He lit it, shielding the small orange flame from the breeze with his hand and taking a slow drag.

"I'm going to bed," he said.

Natalie looked up. "Not going out tonight?"

He exhaled. "Expecting someone?"

She scoffed again, slouching into her seat. "Don't be stupid. It's just unusual for you, isn't it?"

"I'm tired, Nat."

"Well now I know you're lying. You've never been tired," she said to the horizon.

"Goodnight." He leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Make a decision soon, I can’t hang around for interviews after tomorrow.”

He did go to bed early that night, for once.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dot is shown the ropes and Buster makes a costumed appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I'm attempting short chapters with this to make for easier reading. Hopefully, updates will come quickly. Thank you for the comments and kudos so far!)

Dot trundled up the grand driveway of the estate with her suitcase in one hand and an unruly houseplant given her by her old roommate in the other. It was a ridiculous parting gift, and she feared what kind of person she would look like arriving on the job with a potted tree in tow, but she had earnestly promised to keep it alive as a reminder of her enduring devotion to her dear friend.

The butler who answered the door when she rang grinned for a moment at her odd and disheveled state before retaining his cool demeanor.

“Dorothy Addams, I assume?”

“Dot, please.” She smiled

Despite her protestations, the balding butler scooped the plant out of her arm and carried it for her as she came inside.

“Servants quarters are in the east wing,” he explained, leading her across the large tiled vestibule. A fountain bubbled in the middle of the echoing room and Dot stared at it as she passed.

As the two of them went through the ornate dining room, two young boys dressed as indians came barrelling through with much noise and playful shouting. They noticed the new girl, but weren’t interested enough to break from their apparent game of cowboys and indians.

Close behind them was their father, Keaton himself. His iconic face was the only recognizable feature about him, dressed as he was in an impeccable cowboy costume, complete with leather chaps, holstered cap pistol, and large straw stetson. The boys each gave very convincing war cries at the sight of their father and bolted out of the room.

Keaton stopped short, looking slightly out of breath. When the Butler made a short bow, Dot followed his lead and dropped into a curtsy. Needless to say, Dot had never been given a distinctly appraising and business-like look by a grown man in a cowboy costume before. She held her lips in a tight line to keep from laughing, despite her nerves at suddenly meeting Buster.

“Dotty, was it?” He asked.

“Yes. Um. Dot, actually.” She immediately regretted correcting him. She’d resisted the diminutive “Dotty” her whole life, but if Buster Keaton thought her name was Dotty then Dotty it was.

“Dot. Right. I remember now. Is this…your tree?”

Dot blushed crimson. “A parting gift from a friend.”

Keaton laughed. “Don’t look so worried, you may keep your gift.”

“Papa, come ON,” came an impatient voice from around the corner.

“The boss calls,” he excused himself, adjusting his hat and drawing his gun as he ran after his boys.

Dot grinned all the way to the servant’s quarters. Catching such a silly paternal moment had eased some of her fears of the famous family, and the more she saw of the palace they lived in the happier she felt. Golden sunlight streamed into every room from the many windows and open loggias. The space was wide and open and beautiful and it was hard to imagine anything terribly bad happening there.

“Here is the servant’s dining room. Down that hallway are the men’s rooms and this way…” the butler led her down a narrow hallway of bedrooms “are the maid’s rooms. Yours is this one here.”

Her room was small and square and empty, but with a good sized window overlooking a portion of the landscaped grounds. There was only one bed.

“I get a room all to myself?” Dot asked, setting her suitcase on the bed.

“Naturally.” The butler said, though he seemed to puff up with a bit of pride at having such a well acommodated place of work.

“Your uniform is in the top drawer there. Best get yourself dressed quickly, as Madge will be in to go over your duties shortly.”

Dot nodded and the man began to withdraw. Quickly, she put out her hand to stop him from closing the door.

“Wait. You’ve forgotten to tell me your name!” she exclaimed.

The man smiled. “Alfred. It’s very nice to have you, Dot.”

“It’s very nice to be had!” She laughed, a bit giddy.

Left alone in her new room, she wasted no time in doffing her hat and dress and changing into her uniform. It was a pale gray dress with pretty white trim and a lace-trimmed apron to go over it. The fabric was heavy and serviceable, made to last and (she checked the seams) very sturdily stitched. Truthfully, that mandated uniform was one of the best dresses she’d owned.

As she smoothed her hands over the front of the dress in the mirror, she grew suddenly anxious and, digging through her suitcase, she retrieved a rosary of pink glass beads and dropped it in one of the deep pockets of the apron.

A sharp knock came at the door and Dot opened it to a woman dressed the same as she was, with a harried but not unkind face.

“Well, don’t you look sharp? Name’s Madge, head housekeeper. Shall we begin?”

Madge carried over the prefunctory and businesslike demeanor of her introduction throughout the tour of the house. Dot trailed in Madge’s wake throughout the many rooms of the villa, and learned to her surprise that no one in the entire house shared a room with anyone else. Even the two little boys each had their own smart little bedrooms. Which is to say nothing of the shock that Dot endeavored not to show upon learning that Mr and Mrs Keaton slept as far apart as was possible in the sprawling mansion, each with their own bedroom suite on extreme opposites of the house.

When Dot expressed confusion on being shown the location of Mr. Keaton’s suite, having recently been shown Mrs. Keaton’s and having assumed it was their shared bedroom, Madge merely reiterated pointedly “This is Mr. Keaton’s bedroom,” and said no more on the subject. Not that Dot asked, of course.

By the end of the tour, Dot’s head was buzzing. Each room had it’s own housekeeping protocols and expectations and they were all different.

“It’s so much, how will I remember it all? How many housekeepers are there?”

“Just you and me, kid. And you’ll remember because I’ve written everything down,” Madge said and, with a wink, tossed a small diary to Dot, who caught it and sighed in relief to find neat little checklists within. Still, it was a lot for two women to do.

“Gracious.”

“Too much for ya? Mrs Keaton relies on me to tell her if more help is needed. I’d rather not have a troup of girls underfoot, personally. One true, hard worker is all that’s needed, in my opinion.”

“It’s not too much at all. I’ll do my best.” Dot assured her, silently realizing why it was that this position was open to begin with.

“Good. Now, earlier I heard the distinctive sound of indian war cries coming from the direction of the dining room. Soon you will come to know what these sounds mean. That particular sound indicates a mess in the boys’ rooms.”

“You don’t say?” Dot asked with a tilt of her head.

Finally, Madge laughed, patting Dot’s cheek. “Don’t fret, soon you will learn these things too.”


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One short person + Another short person = One tall person.

Dot stepped up onto the chair and stretched onto her tip toes, attempting in vain to reach the curtain rod. Her little book of checklists was open on the desk and the next task for the living room was to take down and launder the curtains.

If only she could figure out how to get them down.

She had recieved a letter earlier that week from her sister. As soon as she'd seen who it was from, her stomach had twisted. Anne never had good news, and any letter from home was unlikely to be positive, let alone one written by her cold little sister.

"Mother is ill again," the letter had begun "and the last of the money was spent on rent last week. You said you'd gotten a better job, right? We are sorry to ask but things are looking grim here with Bobby out of work too. Please send what you can."

At least she had signed it "Love, Anne." Normally she just signed it with an "A."

Dot had spent a good amount of time trying to read into what that "love" meant in regards to the state of things at home. Grim seemed like an unusually visceral term to use.

She'd sent her entire first paycheck to her family to be on the safe side, along with a letter begging for more details about what was wrong with mom. Bobby wasn't much better at letter writing than Anne was, but maybe he'd write the next one and let her know.

The chair underneath her tottered slightly as she stretched and, with a squeak, she hopped down before it could topple over completely. She put her hands on her hips and glared up at the curtain rod,.There had to be an easy way to do this.

The door behind her opened and she was about to ask over her shoulder how she was supposed to get the damn curtain down, but caught the question just as it was on her lips when she realized that the person coming in wasn't Madge, but Mr. Keaton.

"I'll get out of your way," she said, dropping into a little curtsy. She still never quite knew what to do with her hands when she did that.

"You're not in my way. Please." He gestured vaguely around the room before meandering to the couch where he flopped down indecorously and lit a cigarette.

Dot straightened, unsure of what to do next. Mr. Keaton, unlike the Missus, never cared if staff was working around him and in fact, Dot had never seen him send anyone out of a room. Normally it was fine, if a bit nerve racking, to keep on working with him around. It did present a bit of a problem when her next plan of action to retrieve the curtain had been to scoot the desk under the window and scamper on top of it.

"Am I in YOUR way?" he asked.

"Oh, no, of course not. I..uh..." She looked about, desperate to find something to make herself look busy. In a flash she decided to pretend to dust books until he left and she could climb on the furniture in peace. She smiled at him and turned on her heel, grabbing her duster off the desk on her way to the bookcase. She thought she heard him chuckle under his breath but there was no way to know for sure without looking back at him and that was something she couldn't do.

She didn't think she'd ever get used to seeing Buster Keaton in passing as she went about her work. Every time it was like a jolt of electricity down her spine, yes he's real, and three dimensional, and here in this house. Happily, he was gone most days, from early in the morning until late at night, cracking away at whatever new picture he was working on. She doubted if she'd ever become accustomed to his voice.

Unfortunately, the Keaton library was not extensive, and she soon ran out of books to dust. She lingered near the desk, looking down at the checklist. There was nothing else except for the curtains.

"Something wrong?" Couldn't he read a book or something? Maybe he was watching her in search of comedic inspiration.

Dot gave a defeated sigh. "I don't know how to take the curtains down."

He frowned and got to his feet, walking towards the windows. "There's buttons at the top."

"I know that. The problem is I can't reach them, even on a chair."

Buster reached up, his fingertips weren't much closer to the curtain rod than hers. "Mm. Me neither."

"I'm sure there's a way to do it. I'd ask Madge but she's gone to do shopping till this afternoon. Her notes say specifically not to leave a room unfinished, but she was less specific about how to get the curtains down."

Buster leaned over to look at the little book, still frowning. Then, he popped his cigarette between his lips and, with free hands, he patted his shoulders and crouched down slightly. "I'll lift ya."

"What? No," Dot laughed.

He jerked his head to the side and grinned. "C'mon. I've known Madge a few years now, best not be on her bad side, hm?"

He was on the nose in that respect. Madge was a good woman, a sturdy, dependable woman. But she didn't suffer fools, and Dot had a suspicion that there was a very easy and obvious method to retrieving the curtains without climbing atop her employer that she was just too stupid to notice.

"Come on, Dot. I get so few opportunities to be useful in this house." Buster pulled her closer and she cut off a squeal in her throat when he lifted her onto his shoulders. She gripped onto the curtain for balance, breathless and embarrassed at the way the skirt of her dress bunched around her thighs, revealing a rip on her stocking that she hadn't anticipated on being revealed, as she perched on his shoulders. His hands wrapped around her legs just above her knees to steady her and she lost no time in hurrying to unbutton the loops of the curtain.

Halfway through the job he coughed and she looked down. The cigarette in his lips had burned down enough that the smoke was in his eyes. They both laughed when she reached down and plucked it from his mouth and replaced it between his fingers instead. "But don't let go of me. I'm not an acrobat." She warned.

"You weigh about as much as a pigeon. Long as you don't get too squirrelly, I've got you."

Her hands were trembling by the time she got the last loop unbottoned and the weight of the curtain fell into her arms.

"Got it?"

"Got it."

He dropped one shoulder and twisted slightly so that she could slide down off of his shoulders. He held her upper arms as she regained her footing.

"I was about fifteen," he was saying as she got down "when I accepted the terrible truth that I would never be tall. I figured, the next best thing to being a large man would be bein’ able to lift girls over my head. I knew it'd come in handy some day."

"Still, I don't imagine you've ever had Madge on your shoulders?" Dot laughed.

"Ah. No." he scratched the back of his neck, his ears going a bit red.. "Now that I think about it, she's a tall woman isn't she? She can probably reach if she stands on the chair."

"Oh," Dot said as the realization hit. Yes, of course.

"We'll get you a taller chair. Just in case I don't happen to be around next time, huh? It never occurred to me that the tall windows would be a problem. Shows how considerate I am." He snubbed his cigarette out in an ash tray on and end table and slid his hands into his pockets.

"Are you underpaid, Dot?" he asked after a pause.

"Of course not, what do you mean?" she replied over her shoulder. When there was no answer she glanced behind her long enough to see his eyes dart down to her knees. He'd noticed the holes in her stockings. Dot felt her face grow hot and she looked down at the floor. "No, I'm not underpaid. In fact it's a good thing I'm getting as much as I am. There was a...um...an unexpected expense. I'd meant to buy new things with my first paycheck but I sent the whole thing home."

"Is everything alright?" he asked, and he looked like he was chewing on the inside of his lip.

"Yes. Everything's fine. My mom, she gets sick sometimes. It's not unusual but it's not easy to plan for. I didn't expect anyone to see my knees today." She said, chuckling and shrugging her shoulders, praying he'd let it drop.

"We can't know that you need more money if you don't tell anyone." he scolded gently.

"I don't. I don't need more money." Dot realized with horror that he was reaching for his wallet and she stepped forward to try to stop him, but he was already holding out a few green bills.

"Consider it a settlement payment for an inhospitable work environment," he said, gesturing to the tall window. "And uh...lets say 'employee manhandling.'"

Dot laughed quietly but still didn't take the money from him.

"I'm not doing you a favor," he said, his voice unusually serious "I can't have anyone seeing you and thinking I can't afford to take care of the people who depend on me."

"Oh." Reluctantly she allowed him to push the money into her hand. "I'm sorry."

"Me too, I didn't mean to embarrass you."

Dot cleared her throat and rolled her shoulders back, meeting his eye. "It'll take more than that to phase me." She said despite obviously pink cheeks.

His smile returned. Maybe she would get used to seeing it on his face after all, he did it so often. "Good. Now hurry and finish up here then go and buy yourself something pretty, kid."

So much for not being phased. She turned on her heel and gathered up the heavy curtain and her little book. When she turned back to thank him before leaving he was still watching her.

"Go. Go. Please," he said, jerking his chin toward the door.

With the number of times she'd been ordered out of a room by Buster Keaton rising to one, Dot hurried out and back to the relative safety of the servants quarters

Later that evening when Madge had returned and she'd been excused to go out for an hour or two, Dot discovered to her dismay that Mr. Keaton had no earthly idea how much normal things cost. She considered the offense he was likely to take if she brought back change and, after half an hour of turmoil, she went back home with three pairs of the finest silk stockings she'd ever laid her hands on.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which notes are exchanged.

Encounters with Buster were few and far between. He was very rarely at home during the day and at night it was anyone's guess where he went, or when he would get home. Occasionally, Dot would wake up to the sounds of him ransacking the kitchen in the very early morning. She would get up and peek out her door, peering out just enough to catch a glimpse of him, hair mussed, dressed in what could only generously be called a suit. He'd have a piece of toast hanging from his lips while he struggled to make a pot of coffee without clanging the dishes together.

The mornings following those nights, he would appear in the dining room in the morning with red ringed eyes and a tired smirk, his eyes narrowed as if against a headache. Natalie pretended not to notice his hangovers, so everyone else did as well. Still feeling indebted to him, however, Dot took it upon herself to mix up some of the concoction she remembered her father drinking many mornings. It was a disgusting blend of tomato juice, vinegar, ginger, and orange, but her father had sworn by it and her mother had faithfully prepared it on the evenings when father disappeared. Dot wordlessly slipped a jar of it into the fridge, labeled in block letters "HANGOVER CURE"

Some morning the jar would be untouched, and she'd simply dump it into the sink and make a fresh batch. Other mornings, the empty jar would be found sitting on his nightstand when she went in to tidy up.

Months passed and Dot flourished. She found that, while the work was plentiful, none of it was especially difficult. She especially enjoyed dusting the furniture, watching the disturbed dust motes swirl in the shafts of yellow sunlight that seemed to make the house glow. Washing Mrs. Keaton's laundry was always a thrill. Dot could never dream of wearing clothes like hers, so filmy and fashionable, but it was enough just to hold the dresses. Letting the soft silks and satins fall through her fingers like liquid as she folded clothes and put them away always put Dot in a good mood. Natalie's wing, with its octagonal dressing room and petal pink bathroom and what Dot could only describe as a princess bed on it's pedestle, seemed like another world.

It was a Sunday and dot was carrying a large watering pot from room to room. The house was chock full of plants, there was greenery in just about every room, which meant that watering was a significant chore. Madge was on a crusade to convince Scott that, technically speaking, watering the houseplants was gardening. The old gardener disagreed, and maintained that it was maids work. The battle waged on, but in the meantime it was Dot who wielded the watering can.

She knocked gently on Buster's door, even though she was certain he was working. She knocked anyway, on the off chance. When no answer came she pushed open the door to tend to the ficuses and ferns around his space. Buster's room was generally tidy, mainly because of how seldom he was in it. She set about her quick tour of the room, watering plants, dusting, gathering laundry. As she made the bed, she spotted a note on the nightstand. She didn't mean to read it, her eyes just passed over it and, automatically, her brain made sense of the words written on it. He wrote in neat, slanting, capital letters.

_"Has your mother recovered?_   
_\- B"_

Dot tilted her head, both hands still on the corners of the blanket she'd been shaking out. Could this note be meant for her? The only other people she knew of who would be in this room to see it were Madge and Alfred. Neither of them had ill mothers, that she knew of.

She finished making the bed, considering.

In the end, she nearly ignored the note, assuming it couldn't be for her. But at the last moment, she dropped the small pile of washing on the end of the bed and picked up the pencil next to the note.

_"She's on the mend. Thank you._   
_\- D"_

She wrote in flowing cursive just beneath his writing. Truthfully, she had no earthly idea if her mother was better. She'd heard no word from her family. She assumed that no news was good news and tried not to think about it, as guilty as that made her feel.

The following day when she went into his room her eyes immediately went to the nightstand. The first note had gone, being replaced with a new one.

_"Good. I know the hangover cure is you, since it appeared in the house around the same time you did. I wont ask what's in it, I don't want to know. It's disgusting. I can't thank you enough for it._   
_\- B"_

She thought of how to reply as she did the chores in the room.

"I wouldn't tell you if you did ask. It's a secret family recipe. I'm glad it helps.  
\- D"

In the weeks that followed, Dot found herself eagerly awaiting when her rounds would take her to Buster's room and she'd look for a new note. Every day, the one from the day before would disappear (not into the trash can. She emptied that, and she never saw them there) and be replaced with a fresh one. She came to associate his blocky handwriting with a quickening of her pulse, an excitement at passing notes with someone as famous as he, even if they were rather silly and inconsequential. It was a high point of her day anyway.

The notes went as follows:

_"I didn't want to know. But now that you wont tell me, I'm more curious than ever. The tomato is obvious. Is there cinnamon?_   
_\- B"_

"No cinnamon.  
\- D"

_"It has an awful sweetness to it. Sugar? Honey, maybe?_   
_\- B"_

"Not even close. Though, I wonder if sugar would help it go down? Shall I add some? I don't think honey will mix in, since it's cold.  
\- D"

_"Don't add sugar, that can only make the taste worse, don't you think? Is there garlic in it?_   
_\- B"_

"I don't know what it tastes like. I've never had need of it. No garlic.  
\- D"

_"You should taste it. For fairness sake. Is it right to inflict on others what you won't take yourself? I think there is Worchestershire (?) sauce in it._   
_\- B"_

"I know what goes in it. I haven't the slightest inclination to taste it. Still wrong.  
\- D"

_"Oh, that's so ominous. Is it sea water?_   
_\- B"_

"Yes, every morning I sneak off to the beach to collect medicinal sea water.  
\- D"

_"Really?_   
_\- B"_

"No.  
-D"

_"Alright, keep your secrets then. Whatever it is, I'm grateful for it._   
_\- B"_

The notes dwindled after that and Dot missed them. A few words a day, scrawled on a scrap of paper, was hardly a replacement for an actual friendship, but it was the closest she had in the house. Even though she was settling well into the job itself, she found it difficult to mix with the other staff members. They'd all been in the house since it was built, and knew each other. It was hard to break into a group like that. She had hopes that she would make friends with Natalie's Lady's Maid, a woman named Sally who was about Dot's age. But Sally was kept upstairs most of the time, and during what little time they spent together, usually at dinner, she didn't speak much at all. Madge and Alfred and Scott were good people, but about a generation older than Dot and tended to treat her as a child rather than a peer. It wasn't all bad though, normally she was so wiped out by the end of the day that she didn't have spare energy to waste feeling sorry for herself. And she had faith it would get better the longer she stayed.

She made do with the occasional note from B, normally thanking her for her discretion in tending to his hangovers. He asked her twice more about her mother, and both times she lied, because she still had not heard from her.

 

 


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Buster touches Dot no less than three times for no good reason

Dot was startled awake by insistent knocking on her door.  Sensing the urgency of the knocks she quickly opened the door without even stepping into her slippers or putting a wrap over her shoulders. It was Sally, the lady’s maid, and her eyes were wild.

 

“Dot! I need you to take toast up to Buster.”

 

“Huh?” Dot’s half-awake mind struggled to catch up with what the woman had said. 

 

“Alfred’s taken ill. Madge is fetching the doctor but I can’t leave his side. Mr. Keaton needs to be woken up and served breakfast.”

 

“Alfred is ill?” Dot’s awareness was still skittering well behind Sally’s frantic speaking, but her sleepiness was quickly fading. 

 

“Hurry and get dressed.” Sally said, and then she was gone, taking off down the hallway to where the men slept.

 

Dot did as she was told, rushing through getting dressed so that she was still fixing the collar of her dress and her hair was still in it’s braid as she rushed out to follow Sally. She didn’t even glance at the clock in the kitchen, but it was still so dark that it didn’t seem like morning at all. The door to Alfred’s room was cracked open but it was deadly quiet inside. A gentle fear gripped her as she approached the door, then stepped in silently. Sally and the governess flanked the bed where Alfred was sleeping fitfully. His face was shiny and wet in the dim yellow light of a single lamp. 

 

“He’s burnin’ up.” Sally looked up at Dot, her eyes were wet and she had both of her hands clasped around one of Alfred’s.

 

The governess, a portly woman named Thelma with a face that could be severe at times, seemed eager to leave the room. The possible infectiousness of the illness was surely one reason, but in addition to that worry was the increasingly obvious fact that Sally and Alfred were more than coworkers and that Sally was struggling to hide how upset she was in front of Dot and Thelma.

 

“Hurry along, Dot. Come on, I’ll show you what Keaton eats.” Thelma said as she ushered Dot out of the room and back towards the kitchen. “He needs to be awake and ready to head to the studio by six. He likes to be up early but he’s not great at it, it may take some cajoling.”

 

“Cajoling?” Dot asked, watching as Thelma pulled down a tray and began to load it full of a coffee service and little plates on which went toast and hardboiled eggs.

 

“There you are. Up you go, kid. Knock first.” The breakfast tray was pushed into Dots hands and she was halfway up the stairs before she remembered that her hair was still in a braid and she hadn’t put on her shoes. She froze, considering returning to her room to finish getting ready, but then decided against it. It was so early, he probably wouldn’t even notice.

 

She struggled to balance the breakfast tray on her hip so that she’d have a hand open to knock on his door. She knocked softly at first, but there was no answer. So she knocked slightly harder. Still nothing. She sighed, gritting her teeth, and rapped three sharp knocks on the heavy door.

 

Finally she heard a grumble from somewhere deep on the other end of the door and she figured that was the best she was going to get in terms of greeting. She pushed open the door slowly with her elbow, trying to glance at the bed without properly looking at it in case he was indecent. The room was cast in the greenish gray glow of pre-dawn and a cool summer breeze swept in from the large open window. Other than the gentle sound of his methodic breathing, there was no sound at all. Not even the birds had woken yet. 

 

Buster slept on his stomach, his cheek pressed into his pillow and his legs splayed out in such a way that Dot had to stifle a laugh. There was something so unabashedly boyish about the way he slept. Like a kid who’d been given a large bed as a surprise and had vowed to make the most of it, he slept on a diagonal, taking up as much space as he could. His expensive down blanket had been tossed on the ground in a heap and he was tangled from the waist down in just the bedsheets. It was perfectly understandable that he would sleep without a shirt on in the summer, the taut muscles of his back rippling ever so gently with every deep sleeping breath he took. But Dot realized the imperative of making him aware of the fact that it was her in the room with him, not Alfred, as soon as possible, lest he hop out of bed at least half naked before realizing it.

 

“Mr. Keaton?” Dot said gently.  He stirred slightly but didn’t respond. “It’s Dot.”

 

“Dot?” He mumbled quietly, one bleary eye opening to look at her, taking in the sight of her unpinned hair, the tray, and her bare feet. “What’s the matter?”

 

“Alfred’s sick, sir. They sent me up to fill in. Uh…” She placed the tray on the edge of the bed and glanced down at her toes “I was in a bit of a rush.”

 

Dot turned her head, staring out the window determinedly as Buster shifted, pulling the sheets around his waist and reaching out over the edge of the bed to grab the pajama shirt that was tossed over the back of a nearby chair.

 

“Alfred, sick? He never gets sick.” Buster was saying, his voice still gravelly with sleep. “I can’t remember him ever being sick before.”

 

“He looks like he’s in pretty bad shape,” Dot said, and when she dared to look back at her boss he was just finishing with the buttons of his shirt “Madge went off in search of a doctor.”

 

“A doctor?” he asked, taking a bite out of the toast on the tray. “Is it serious?”

 

Dot shrugged. “I’ve only just woken up as well. I don’t know much, sorry.”

 

“Don’t be sorry, Dot. Have you eaten?” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead he just started spreading raspberry jam on the other piece of toast and handed it to her. Dot chewed thoughtfully, noticing the funny way his hair stood up on the side he slept on.

 

“Thelma told me that Alfred is in charge of getting you up and out the door in the morning. I’m afraid I don’t quite know what that entails,” she said.

 

Buster grinned sleepily, looking more boyish than ever. “Don’t fear, Little Dorothy. I can dress and comb myself. Mainly Alfred just stands around to shame me out of crawling back into bed half dressed. I think I’d sleep through lunch most days if he wasn’t here.”

 

“I think anyone would if they stayed out as late as you do,” Dot said without thinking. She immediately regretted it. Teasing him through notes on the nightstand was one thing, but in person it seemed all the more impertinent.

 

Thankfully, Buster only laughed. “You’re filling his shoes marvelously so far.”

 

He took a gulp of coffee before carefully swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing up. Dot looked away, though technically he was fully dressed now. Pajamas, while technically modest enough, still seemed improperly intimate for her to see him in. 

 

“Stay here,” he said “I’ll get dressed in the other room and we’ll go down and check on our friend together. Drink my coffee, if you like. I can get some at the studio.”

 

Standing there alone, Dot had the overwhelming urge to make his bed. With nothing else to do besides listen to the faint rustling sounds of Buster undressing in the next room, she went through the familiar motions of smoothing his sheets and shaking out the down blanket on top. She’d often wondered to herself how he managed to twist his sheets so thoroughly in his sleep. She’d thought he might be an insomniac, but now she knew he was just one of those endearingly sloppy sleepers. 

 

When he returned, she was sipping from his cup but she replaced it hastily, blushing slightly even though he’d said it was okay. He was dressed casually, his hair smoothed down but not styled so much as simply combed. He looked practical and fully awake now. He was, at heart, a man of action. His groggy, mildly disoriented early morning persona was an aberration, a private side of him that Dot was now one of few people to have known. 

 

She gathered up the breakfast tray and together they went back downstairs together. The doctor had arrived by then, and the elderly man was hovering over the side of Alfred’s bed, listening to his heart. Buster stepped in and placed his hand on Alfred’s shoulder.

 

“Not feeling your best, I hear?” Buster asked.

 

Alfred was awake now, but seemed too weak to speak. Instead he merely smiled and shrugged one weary shoulder.

 

“It’s influenza, sir,” the doctor directed at Buster. “He needs to be hospitalized. Not sure how long. It may be some time before he is well enough to work again.”

 

Sally stifled a sniff as a frightened tear fell down her cheek. She dashed it away quickly but it didn’t escape Buster’s notice. Buster pulled on his earlobe thoughtfully, considering for a moment, before he seemed to come to a decision.

 

“Sally, I’ll ask you to accompany Alfred. A pretty friend with him may be just the comfort he needs to recover quickly. You’ll both receive your pay just as if you were still working, so don’t worry about that. And,” he looked at the Doctor “the bill will be made out to me, of course.”

 

Sally looked up at him and her whispered “Thank you” spoke volumes.

 

“Dot will take over for you while you’re gone. Madge, can you spare her?”

 

“She’ll be busy but we can manage,” Madge said.

 

Dot tried not to think about how she would cope with the duties of being a housemaid, ladies maid, and butler all at once as Buster led her out of the room again, feeling the slight weight of his hand between her shoulder blades. Once out of earshot of the others in the hallway, he stopped and turned to face Dot, his hand slipping from her back to her upper arm, where he left it, seeming almost to forget that he was still touching her.

 

“Did you know about Sally and Alfred?” He asked gently, not accusing, just curious.

 

“I didn’t, sir. Either they hid it well or I’m just oblivious. It may very well be that I am oblivious.”

 

The corners of his eyes crinkled in an almost-smile. “That’s fine. I mean, it’s not allowed, technically speaking. But...close quarters. It was bound to happen, huh? Still, she’s a bit young for him, isn’t she?”

 

Dot shrugged with a slight grin “He’s thoughtful and sweet. Gentleness goes far in the eyes of a girl.”

 

“Huh. If you say so. I didn't think he had it in him, the old dog. Good for him." he seemed almost to be talking to himself more than to Dot. "Natalie may be displeased though. Perhaps you can just tell her that Sally is ill too. When you bring up her breakfast, I mean. It’s not quite a lie, is it? Sally likely will be sick soon if she isn’t already, what with them being...together.”

 

“Right.” Dot said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

 

If Buster had forgotten that his hand was still on Dot’s arm, he must’ve remembered then because his thumb stroked over the fabric of her sleeve twice before he let go. “I don’t like to ask you to lie. If you’d rather, you can tell her the truth and if she's unhappy just tell her I said to telephone me at the studio. Whatever you would rather do, I’ll leave that in your hands. Nat sleeps late normally, I don't think we should wake her up to tell her. I’m sure she still has a bowl of fruit with cream and strong tea every morning when she wakes up.”

 

“Fruit. Cream. Tea.” Dot repeated, nodding. Her hands twisted in front of her and her heart was beating oddly at all the changes that had happened so quickly and at such an unforgiving hour. Part of her wanted to believe she was dreaming.

 

“Dot, are you scared?” 

 

“The flu…” she muttered. “Like you said...close quarters.”

 

He understood and touched her again. Thoughtlessly. His fingers rested on her wrist.  “No one dies of the flu anymore. They’ll be just fine, and so will you. Just wait and see.”

 

Dot knew that wasn’t exactly true, but hearing him say it did help a bit. 

 

“If you do start to feel sick though, at the first sign, you go right to bed. You hear me? Don’t waste a minute worrying about your work.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

 “Good girl." He smiled and looked down at his watch. "I have to be off. You hurry and finish getting dressed. I actually like this sort of sleepwalker fashion, but Nat is a stickler about the uniform.”

 

Dot blushed, gripping the slept-in braid that fell over her shoulder as he said goodbye and left her there, reeling.

 

 

When the bell for Natalie’s room rang in the kitchen, Dot jumped up from the chair where she’d been waiting and quickly hurried upstairs with the woman’s breakfast. Natalie was already up when she got there, sitting in front of a large vanity mirror dressed in a beautiful diaphanous dressing gown trimmed in ermine.

 

“Where’s Sally?” She asked, not turning around but just looking at Dot through the mirror.

 

“Alfred and Sally took sick in the night. Doctor came early this morning and they’re in the hospital now.”

 

“Oh my.” Natalie said, turning around and gripping the back of the white chair she sat on. “Will they be alright?”

 

“It’s influenza.”

 

“Oh dear.” The genuine concern on the beautiful woman’s face did a lot to soften Dot’s fear of her. “Do you suppose I should send the boys to Connie’s to be safe?”

 

“I suppose it’s better to be safe than sorry, if it’s no trouble for your sister.” Dot was surprised that she would be asked her opinion on something like that.

 

“Connie would love to have them, I’m sure. I’ll speak to her about it this afternoon. You are filling in for Sally, then?” Natalie had turned back to her mirror to attend to her makeup and, though she looked slightly paler than before, the decision to speak to her sister seemed to have soothed her worry.

 

“I’ll do my best, Ma’am.”

 

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll do fine, Dot. In my closet there is a pale green dress with a ruffle at the neck. That and the white buckle shoes with the shorter heel, please.”

 

Dot was grateful that afternoon when Natalie took both the children and went out for the day with her sisters. Running back and forth between her housework duties and tending to Natalie’s whims all morning was exhausting and she missed her old routine. There was no time to complain, though, because in addition to her normal chores, and she Madge scrubbed both Alfred’s and Sally’s rooms from top to bottom, throwing open the windows and airing them out thoroughly in hopes of preventing the spread of the illness. All day long, Dot paid special attention to how she felt, but by the end of the day she felt no sicker than she had that morning.

 

When Natalie returned home, laden with bags of new clothes, she was alone. She instructed Thelma to gather the boy’s things and meet them at Constance’s house until Natalie decided it was safe for them to come home. Dot was tasked with putting the new clothes away in the “closet” (so-called despite being a larger room than Dot’s.)

 

Natalie was brushing out her hair when a soft knock came to her bedroom door and Dot heard Buster’s voice.

 

“Nat?”

 

“Come in, Buster.”

 

Dot hurried to the doorway of the closet and sought eye contact with Buster over Natalie’s shoulder. When she had it, she shook her head slightly, hoping he would understand that she meant to tell him that she’d lied to Natalie about Sally and Alfred.

 

She thought she saw a flash of understanding in his eyes before he looked away from her to his wife. “Two servants down, huh?” he said.

 

“Three. Thelma isn’t sick but I sent her with the boys to Connie’s just to be on the safe side.”

 

Dot didn’t listen to the rest of their conversation, instead sinking back into the wardrobe to pick over Natalie’s new acquisitions and find a place for everything. When she emerged again, Natalie smiled rather warmly at her.

 

“Will you bring me some tea and a bit of cake before going to bed, Dot?”

 

“Of course, ma’am.”

 

“You’ve done very well today. Thank you for your help.”

 

Dot curtsied, feeling slightly guilty for her less than warm assumptions about Mrs. Keaton, and left the room. She wasn’t at the bottom of the stairs yet before she heard footsteps behind her and turned to find Buster jogging down the steps to catch up with her.

 

“Hold on, Dot.” he said, reaching out to touch the backs of his fingers to her forehead “How do you feel?”

 

“Tired.” she admitted “But just normal tired, I think. Not sick. What about you?” She asked as he cupped her cheek with his hand as if he didn’t quite believe her.

 

“Oh I’m fit as a fiddle. No worries here. Alright then, you’d better hurry and do as Nat says.”

 

“Do you need anything?”

 

“No, I’m fine. You go right to bed after bringing up Natalie’s tea, okay?”

 

Dot laughed and agreed, acutely aware of what a strange thing it was to be so fussed over by him of all people. She got the impression he was more scared of the flu than he let on, but she wouldn’t let him know that she suspected him. Let him play the brave man of the house if he wanted. 

 

“Goodnight, Mr Keaton.” She said, curtsying. 

 

“Goodnight, Dot.”

  
  



	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a ribbon is stolen.

The studio was chaotic and loud and his deadline loomed heavily on the horizon, but despite all that, Buster couldn’t seem to find his stride. His work, which had always been his refuge, had been losing that power as of late. It seemed like the situation with Natalie was only getting worse as time went on, and it was seeping into aspects of his life that he’d told himself were cut off from the others. Everything was blurring into one, and he’d begun to bite his nails again.

He’d used to believe that if he could just fight with his wife, it would get better. Just one good blow out, with yelling and tears and throwing things, and they could lay everything out and move on. She would never fight though, not really. She seethed occasionally. It was a good day when he could get a proper seethe out of her. But mostly it was just a constant low-level annoyance that radiated off her, a sense of quiet, resigned disappointment in him that she wore like parisian silk. It didn’t really bother him. Until it did.

Buster was antsy as he stalked around the studio, chewing his fingernails to the quick and trying to concoct the perfect guaranteed laugh for his next picture. Losing himself in the work was what he did, he was good at it, he just had to focus.

Pretending to be in love with his leading lady was a comfort. Fake or not, having a pretty girl look at him like she was desperate to be kissed helped with that creeping feeling of wanting to crawl out of his skin. This girl had her hair bobbed, straight and smooth as a helmet, perfect and put together. He couldn’t help but compare it to Dot’s slept-in braid. 

Running beneath the vague sense of impending explosion with regards to his marriage and his hovering anxiety about his work was the constant replaying of that morning when he’d woke up to Dot in his room. He was almost used to it now. Every morning she slipped in, quiet as a mouse, and woke him gently with the scent of coffee and her sleepy voice. Now she always had her hair pinned up when she came to him, but he couldn’t forget that braid. He was surprised at how long her hair was. When she was working, she always kept it pinned in curls that hung just over her ears and at the nape of her neck. It was easy, at first glance, to assume that she’d cut her hair with the fashion of the day. But no, it was long. A scene played over and over in his mind, just a few frames really, a mental clip of him reaching up to untie the ribbon that held her braid together and running his fingers through her hair, shaking it out over her shoulder. The fantasy stopped there, even in the privacy of his own thoughts it was difficult to go on, she was so sweet and inviolable. Even so, he ran his fingers through her hair a hundred times a day in his mind.

When he first noticed how his thoughts wandered to his maid with increasing regularity, he had gotten spooked and called up a few of his girls. The ones he kept in the wings, the sure things, the girls who pitied him and would take care of him when he called. Even then, his terrible anxiety about getting them out of his room before Dot came to wake him up kept him from actually feeling any more at peace. He knew how obvious it had to be, Dot must’ve known from the beginning that he and his wife were little more than cohabitants, and she had to know that he was an unfaithful husband. It wasn’t exactly a well-kept secret. But still he was compelled to hide it from her, as if to protect her from the ugliness of it. The ugliness of him.

It was in this stir-crazy and dissatisfied state that Buster was invited out drinking after work. He agreed readily, even knowing from experience that alcohol never really gave him what he needed. If anything, it only exacerbated his manic moods, but the chance to sink into the mind-emptying throb of a merry crowd was one he never could turn down. 

He went home that night very drunk. Happy, but very drunk. In the back of his friend’s car, his leading lady half in his lap and as drunk as he was, he made the decision at the last minute not to bring her inside. He stumbled out onto his driveway, saying goodnight to his buddies and his pouting costar. As always, he walked around to the side door that led directly to his wing of the house. Finding it locked, he dug through his pockets, even as he distinctly remembered leaving his key on his nightstand. In his mental fog, he wandered to the window, but it too was locked. Of course it was, with Madge and Dot as maids there was never any cause for doubt about the security and orderliness of the house. 

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. Ringing the doorbell was out of the question. The last thing he needed was to wake up Nat. Even though that was certainly one way to get a good and proper seethe out of her. 

He was half resigned to sleeping in the yard as he worked his way around the house, testing windows and doors. When he got around to the far side he stopped trying them, knowing that this was where the staff slept. He wasn’t quite drunk enough to go breaking and entering into an employees bedroom. He was about to attempt scaling the house to the balcony when he caught sight of a thin leafy branch peeking out from behind a curtain in a window. Instantly, he remembered Dot’s first day, and the tree she brought with her. This was Dot’s window. 

He was too drunk for breaking and entering, but perhaps just drunk enough to knock politely.

Hesitantly, he tapped on the glass. When there was no answer, he nearly gave up. He gave it one more shot, a slightly firmer knock. The curtain was ripped aside so suddenly that he jumped backward. Dot did too, but she held a hairbrush aloft, brandishing it like a weapon. He watched the recognition dawn on her face and her expression shifted from fear to concern. She put the brush down and quietly unlatched the window, pushing it open.

“Buster?” she asked in a hushed tone. It was the braid again, this time held with a pale blue ribbon tied in a lopsided bow. He stared at it a moment, then remembered that she’d spoken.

“I’m locked out.”

“Oh. Okay. Just a moment.” She stepped away from the window and was halfway to her bedroom door when she turned around again and seemed oddly surprised to find him halfway through the window, about to tumble gracelessly onto her floor.

“What are you doing?” She whispered fiercely, catching him under his arms as he toppled over into the room.

“Going to bed?” 

“I was going to go and unlock your door.”

“Huh?” he straightened up with some difficulty, noticing for the first time that she was in a nightgown. It was simple and almost childish, with long sleeves and a dainty ruffle at the hem. Thin, white cotton. Soft. Reflexively, he reached out to touch her waist, but she caught him by the hand before he was able to.

“Oh, Buster.” She whispered, but she seemed like she wasn’t talking to him so much as to herself. “Look at what you’ve done to yourself. Come on, I’ll help you to your room”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Buster flinched at her words. The sadness of them. He knew he had cause for shame, but he wasn’t coherent enough to feel the sting of it yet. He focused on the warmth of her little hand in his as she led him to her bedroom door. As she turned the knob, she froze, and turned back to look at him. He was so close behind her that when she turned around her nose nearly touched his. 

“Buster, you must be absolutely silent. Do you understand? If anyone sees you leaving my room at this time of night, it will get back to Nat and she’ll misinterpret the situation. She’ll burn this place down. Do you hear me?”

He nodded vigorously, noticing the very light dusting of faint freckles over the bridge of her nose.

“Are you sure you can be quiet?”

He pushed his finger against his lips silently.

They tiptoed out of her room and into the kitchen. She stopped there briefly to procure the bottle of her hangover potion and then they slipped noiselessly into the house proper. It was so large and dark that Buster got goosebumps even though it was his own house. At the stairs, Dot wrapped an arm around his waist. He wanted to shrug her off. He could walk, he reasoned. He wasn’t an invalid. But when he stubbed his toe on the third step, he was glad for her steadying presence.

Once they made it into the safety of his room, Buster laughed.

“I just got it. You were gonna come and unlock my door so I could come around.”

“Yes, Buster,” she said. She was fidgeting with her sleeve, looking unsure of herself as he stumbled towards his drink cart, colliding into it with a dangerous clatter of glass. He caught the whiskey decanter before it tipped over, though, and poured two glasses.

“Have a drink with me, Dot,” he said, handing her a glass.

“I don’t think--”

“Please.” He meant it to sound more like a plea than a command, but it must’ve come out wrong because he saw her stiffen, and she took the glass. She held it to her lips, but he didn’t see her swallow.

“Are you pretending?” He laughed, standing close to her and bending down to watch her throat as she took a gulp of the whiskey for show. She smiled at him.

“Sit down,” he said, steering her into the settee against the wall. She did as he said and he relaxed somewhat, sitting next to her. He felt better in his own room, with the moonlight streaming in through the window and the soothing familiarity of everything. Dot was familiar too, her face was just as he had imagined it so many times.. She looked tired, and like even she wasn’t quite sure if she was dreaming or not.

He acted before the thought had even fully formed in his mind, reaching up to tug at the ribbon in her hair. It made a whispering sound as the bow came undone in his hand. Her hair tumbled out of the loose braid easily as he slid his fingers through it. She was like a statue when he leaned over and nuzzled her neck, pressing his lips to the warm skin behind her ear.

When he leaned back to look at her, there were tears in her eyes.

“Why are you making that face?” he asked, crestfallen.

“I..” she whispered, and he stared at a tear that fell, following the contours of her nose to the corner of her lips. “I can’t have any trouble. I need this job. My family depends on me.” She was speaking so quietly the words were more breathed than spoken.

Buster stood up so quickly that his head swam and he nearly toppled over. Dot was there to steady him, and he gripped onto her shoulder for a moment as he squeezed his eyes shut. Annoyed by his own disorientation he stomped towards his bed, slamming his glass down on the end table and collapsing onto his pillows. His mind was a screaming mess, trying to latch onto a single thought, but thoughts were slippery. It was silent for a while, and then he felt her approaching. 

“You have to drink this,” she said. He looked up to see her holding out the bottle of hangover cure. “If you want to be up for work tomorrow, you need to drink this before you go to bed.”

He groaned and rolled away from her, but when she pulled up on his shoulder, he didn’t resist her, and when she pushed the bottle into his hand, he sipped it. As the thick liquid coated his throat, he watched in a daze as Dot kneeled down and untied his shoes. When she pushed his jacket off his shoulders, he handed the bottle back and forth between his hands for her to take the jacket away and lay it over the back of a chair. 

“Dot?” but she wouldn’t answer, or even look at his face, as her fingers undid the buttons of his shirt, pulling the hem of it out of his pants and unbuttoning all the way down. When he was down to his undershirt she took the now empty bottle from his hands and placed it on the nightstand.

“Lie down,” she ordered gently. He obeyed.

“Dot, I’m not askin’ ya to--” he began as she fumbled with his belt.

“I’m not.” she interrupted, her voice emphatic as she pushed his trousers down his hips, sliding them off and then pulling his blanket up over him.

“Goodnight,” she said, her cheeks were enflamed and she was avoiding eye contact.

She turned to leave but, acting with more dexterity than should have been possible, he lunged for her hand, grabbing it just before she was out of arm’s reach.

“Wait. Dot. Stay with me.”

“Stop it,” she said, looking him in the eyes at last. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Yes I do. I’m not saying stay with me like...that. The way you’re thinkin’. Just lay down next to me, that’s all. Just until I’m asleep. You’re not in any trouble with me.” She was shaking her head and Buster grew frantic, gripping her hand tighter. “Please.”

This time the please was no command, and she didn’t stiffen in fear. This time, she seemed to be seeing him for the first time that night, or maybe like she was seeing him for the first time at all, and her hand went slack in his. 

“Alright,” she said, but her voice sounded so sad. She came back to the bed, lifting the edge of the blanket to climb in next to him. She slid into his arms and it felt as natural as anything when he held onto her, nestling into her side and turning his face against her neck again. He tried to stay awake, to remember how this felt for when he needed it later, but her fingers delicately traced the contours of his ear and he was asleep in minutes.

He wasn’t sure how long she stayed, if she fell asleep too or if she just waited for his breathing to slow and his arm around her to grow heavy, but when he woke in the morning he was alone. Terribly, sickeningly alone, with only a pale blue ribbon clutched in his fist to prove she’d been there at all.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dot decides to have two friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((I'm so nervous about writing Natalie's bits because I know that the fandom has mixed feelings about her. I hope I did alright with this.))

His bed was so soft. Dot scooted down slightly so that she could rest her head on Buster's, and she tried to relax. Her senses were on high alert, he'd kissed her neck, after all, and now he had her in his bed with him. There was something so boyish, almost childlike, in the way he'd asked her to lie down with him though. She wanted to believe that he wasn’t trying to take advantage of her, but she couldn't quite let her guard down, no matter how soft and timid he was as he curled around her.

The minutes ticked by and he made no move to kiss her again, nor did his hands wander beyond her hip where his fingers lay motionless and gently clinging. After a while, he seemed to sink against her and his breathing came in deep, regular sighs. He was asleep. Dot felt that she should have been more frightened than she was after what had happened. She'd never been alone with a man like that, and certainly not one who was too drunk to know what he was doing. Thinking about how vulnerable she'd made herself, Dot wanted to kick herself. How could she be so foolish, coming up to his room with him in his state? She shuddered to think of what might have happened if Buster had been a man with less scruples.

It was difficult to be angry with him, despite everything. Especially seeing him now, his brows slightly furrowed in his sleep, his nose nuzzled into her collarbone. It had never occurred to Dot that he may be lonely. The man was never wanting for friends or company, and he couldn't possibly be bored with everything that he had going on all the time. And yet, there was something so desperate about him, like he hadn't been touched at all in years. She ran her fingertips through his hair just above his ear. He was warm, and he smelled like whiskey.

Dot glanced at the clock on his dresser. It was nearing two in the morning. She blinked heavily. It would be so easy to fall asleep here. She could so easily roll onto her side and wrap her arms around him. She let her eyes fall closed for just a few minutes, thinking about how it had felt when he'd kissed her neck. Even if he was too drunk to think straight or to remember it at all, Dot knew that she'd always remember that fleeting moment of her small, insignificant life, when Buster Keaton had wanted her. 

Minutes passed and she remembered how bad it would be if she was not in her own bed when the other servants woke up, or if, God forbid, Buster's wife were to come to his room while she was in his bed. The thought of that made her heart race and, as slowly and gently as she could, she slipped out of Buster's warm embrace and out from under the heat of his blankets. It was difficult to pull herself away from him and she had a wild urge to kiss his sleeping forehead before she tiptoed out of the room and hurried back downstairs. 

She slipped silently back into her own bed, but it felt hard and cold in comparison to Buster's. She'd been so tired upstairs, so close to sleep, but when she was back in her room she ended up tossing and turning, replaying every moment that had passed since he tapped on her window. When the sounds of other people waking up finally came, she welcomed the coming morning.

She expected to find Buster just as she had left him, but when she took his breakfast up to his room, he was gone. She stared at the bed in surprise for a moment. It looked so wrong, somehow. It took her a moment to realize that he'd made the bed himself. He'd never done that before.  There was a horrible sinking feeling in her chest when she saw a slip of paper neatly folded on his nightstand. It had been a long time since he'd left her a note there. She picked it up and sank down onto the edge of his bed to read it.

_ I’m horribly terribly sorry.  _

_ I’ve really made an ass of myself this time but the worst of it is that I think I frightened you. I hope you know that even in a drunken stupor I wouldn’t ever let any harm come to you. Particularly at my own hands. I’m awfully sorry for offending you, especially when I owe you so much. You’re dear to me, and I hope we can still be friends.  _

_ -Your Buster _

Dot suddenly felt the sheer exhaustion at being woken so early settle heavily on her shoulders and in her weariness she dashed away silly tears from her eyes. She had no idea why this letter made her so sad, but she knew she would save that slip of paper forever.  Perhaps it was the way he'd said "I hope we can still be friends." As if they even had been friends before. Did he really think of her as a friend, truly? Surely, there was some part of him that trusted her enough to come to her when he was drunk and useless and locked out of his own home.  Was that friendship?

With no one to rush out of bed, she tucked the letter into her uniform against her heart, and returned downstairs.

Natalie woke up earlier than usual, but Dot was ready, and she hurried up to the frothy and silken domain of the lady of the house. Dot's face was smoothed into a practiced expression of gentle indifference, but the letter against her skin stung like a needle when Natalie smiled at Dot from her bed.   _ "Your Buster" _ he had signed. But he wasn't hers, not really, not at all. 

"Good morning, Dot." Natalie said, her voice delicate and sweet. 

Did Natalie's skin prickle and her heartbeat shimmer when Buster kissed her? If it did, why did she sleep here and not with her husband? 

An unexpected wave of bitterness and jealousy washed over Dot as she set up the breakfast tray over Natalie's lap. Dot would not be in this swirl of conflicting emotions if Buster had had his wife to hold him in bed until he fell asleep. Buster would not have kissed her if he’d had his wife to kiss. The intensity of her bitterness made Dot’s hands shake with bewilderment. She'd always been a little afraid of Natalie, but even so she'd loved her too, in a way. She was so glamorous and although she could come off as imperious and cold, spending any time with her revealed all that to be an act. She would slip into these moments of warmth and kindness that endeared her to you. Dot immediately recognized her jealousy for what it was, and tried to quash it. It was an ugly emotion, and it made her  _ feel  _ ugly. 

"I take it that Buster has gone?" Nat said, sipping her tea.

"Oh? Yes, he was gone this morning. I wasn't expecting.."

"Oh dear, you didn't know, did you? I imagine it was surprising when he wasn't there this morning." Natalie laughed. "He only let me know by a note slipped under my door early this morning. You see, a studio just isn't good enough for the illustrious Buster Keaton, so he's packed everything up to go film in the woods."

"In the woods?"

"Isn't he too funny? He gets these...these wild hairs every so often. Just, out of nowhere it's like he can't sit still, even worse than usual, you know. You've seen him. Always on the move, that man."

“That can’t be easy. For you, I mean,” Dot offered.

Natalie’s lips fell at the corners ever so slightly. 

“Sorry,” Dot murmured.

“No, don’t be sorry. You’re right. It’s not easy. You’re sweet to think of me.” Natalie put her tray aside and pulled her feet up. “Will you sit for a moment, Dot?”

Hesitatingly, Dot sat on the edge of Natalie’s bed.

“You must be curious,” Natalie said in a low whisper. “About Buster and I. Why we have separate rooms.”

“It’s none of my business, ma’am,” Dot said quietly. 

“Isn’t it?” Natalie’s eyes were insistent and she reached for Dot’s hand, squeezing it. 

Dot flushed no matter how hard she tried not to. Guilt and shame flooded her so intensely that her ears were ringing

“I just want you to understand. I want to explain, because I know how it may look. It’s not that I don’t love him. I do, of course I do. But...Dot, have you ever been pregnant?”

Dot’s eyes went wide and she shook her head. “No, Ma’am.”

“It’s not anything like people say. It’s not a miracle or beautiful or anything like that. Oh Dot, it’s brutal.” Natalie leaned closer, still squeezing Dot’s hand. The look on her face was intense, like she was imparting a shameful secret. “I was so ill, I could hardly leave the house. Pains and aches and so many sleepless nights tossing and turning. I hated it, Dot. I love my boys, but I hated every single last minute of my pregnancies. Every last minute. I don’t want to do it again. But Buster, well he understands, of course, but he’s...a healthy man in his prime. And sharing a bed with me without...exercising his rights as a husband...was torture to him, apparently.”

“It’s not my place to suggest such things but...aren’t there ways to prevent...? If you understand what I mean,” Dot asked, blushing.

“Oh yes, of course. But then, I already deal with so much guilt for not getting having a Church wedding. I tried for a while, the diaphragm, you know? But every time all I could see in my mind was my priest’s face, frowning and shaking his head at me.”

Dot laughed, a nervous laugh that she couldn’t hold back. Happily, Natalie laughed too, shaking her head.

“I know it’s ridiculous. But even if I could forget the sunday sermons against contraception, the fear that it would fail and I would fall pregnant anyway was so much that I couldn’t even enjoy him. If I was going to risk my mortal soul, shouldn’t I at least have been able to enjoy it while it lasted? But I couldn’t. And Buster could tell. I tried to fake it, of course, but he’s perceptive. I think a part of him must think that it’s his fault, that I was unsatisfied by his performance.” Natalie was blushing now, but she charged on as if she’d been yearning to tell someone this story for a long time. “That was never the problem, but men are so delicate, aren’t they? When I stopped...um...responding to his touch, despite my reasons, the damage was already done. All he could hear was that I didn’t want him anymore. Anyway, we decided together that it was best if we had separate rooms. But I fear that I’ve caused him a great deal of harm.”

“I’m sorry.” Dot whispered in the silence that followed. 

“I’m just glad I am able to tell you the truth. I know that it looks like I’m just...some frigid wife. Like I’m cold or unfeeling.”

“I don’t think that,” Dot said, squeezing her hand in return.

Natalie smiled. “Thank you. But you know...maybe I am. I feel so far from him these days. For a long time now, actually. I know he sees other women. I thought that would help, actually. That he’d have those needs met by someone else and come home to me but it’s just not working out that way. We have such separate lives now. I can go for days without ever even thinking about him. Isn’t that too awful?”

Dot didn’t know what to say.

Suddenly, Natalie laughed, taking her hand from Dot’s and running it through her hair. “I’m sorry for dumping all of this on you. Really, I am. I just wanted you to know my side of the story. I’m sure he’ll tell you his, too, if he hasn’t already. It’s an awfully uncomfortable situation you’ve come into here in this house. I apologize for that.”

“Thank you for confiding in me.” Dot tried to smile comfortingly, but she was all to aware of how out of her depth she was. She had no experience at all with these kinds of things, and she had no advice to give, nor any soothing words. “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

“You do help. I feel much better for having said it all out loud. Like a weight has been lifted. It’s good to have someone to talk to, and since Sally isn’t coming back…” Natalie said coyly while getting up and heading to the dressing room. Dot followed her.

“Sally isn’t coming back?” 

Natalie began to rifle through her clothes, winking over her shoulder at Dot.

“It’s still a secret, so don’t tell anyone, though I’m sure she will be by to tell you all soon enough. She and Alfred won’t be coming back to us because they’re engaged.”

“You dont say!”

“It’s terribly romantic, isn’t it? A forbidden workplace romance and a proposal spurred on by the looming spectre of death while they both were ill. It sounds like a novel.”

“It does.” Dot laughed, and the two women slipped back into their easy routine. Though, secretly, Dot burned with the hypocrisy of acting like a friend to Natalie when she couldn’t stop thinking about Buster’s lips on her neck and the scent of him as he slept. It was true that Buster had been drunk, and he’d apologized for it and would likely never kiss her again. It was a forgivable offense, really, looking at just those facts. But it was Dot’s own feelings that made her feel ashamed. How she’d stayed up all night thinking about him, and how she lingered over the words  _ “Your Buster” _ at the end of his letter for so long.

That morning Dot made a vow to herself to stop thinking of Buster that way. She’d stop thinking about how it had felt to be held by him, and kissed by him. She liked both Natalie and Buster, and the only way that she could be friends with both of them was to remain impartial and removed from their private romantic matters. It was the only way.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dot wears a very nice dress.

Buster was gone for days. He was gone so long that Dot almost got used to him not being there. She still knocked on his door before entering, just on the off chance that he’d come home in the night. But other than that, she had stopped looking for him around every corner, stopped straining her ears listening for him. It took him being gone for Dot to realize how often she thought of him and how eagerly she awaited every interaction with him, even if it was only a glance and a nod from across a room.

Natalie seemed to blossom in his absence. She had things to do and people to see nearly every day and her whole disposition seemed brighter. Dot’s friendship with Natalie grew in fits and starts. Sometimes Natalie wanted to talk, and sometimes she’d shut down Dot’s chitchat so coldly that Dot was left to wonder if she’d imagined their ever being friends. Dot didn’t let it get to her though. At the end of the day, Nat was her boss and the boss has no real obligation to be nice all the time. Once Natalie was out the door in the mornings, it was almost like the early days again, when dot was a house maid and nothing else. The house was cleaner than ever, and Dot was bored.

On the day that he returned, Dot was out at the boy’s playhouse in the expansive backyard, straightening up their toys. As she ducked her head to come out of the miniature house, she glanced up at the larger version of the house and saw him coming down, not the monumental staircase that led down from the house to the pool, but the grassy hill. Her heart skipped a beat at his sudden appearance. He was wearing white and had his hands in his pockets. He saw her and smiled, quickening his pace while Dot waited. When he got closer, he slowed down, as if gauging her reaction, searching her face to see if she was happy to see him or not.

“You’re back,” Dot said, grinning.

He matched her smile, taking another step nearer to her and lifting his hand to shield his eyes from the sun and get a better look at her. 

“Natalie isn’t at home,” Dot continued “She said something about staying with her sister tonight. You can probably find her there.”

“You got my note?” he asked with a hint of impatience in his voice.

“Y-yes. I did.”

“I’m sorry you had to see me like that.” His voice was low and he took another step forward. 

Dot thought that the sudden and unannounced nature of his return must have knocked her off balance, because she felt as trembly and nervous around him as the first time they’d met. He wasn’t a tall man, but his presence was overwhelming. 

“Oh, it’s nothing. Please don’t worry about me.” 

“But I do,” he said “and I’d like to make it up to you.”

“Don’t be silly there’s--”

He was smiling, leaning back on his heel like he knew a particularly good secret when he interrupted her with “There’s a party at Pickfair tonight.”

“Oh?” 

“Can I take you?”

“Of course not.” Dot scoffed, turning her face away from his gaze and looking out across the yard. “Are you crazy?”

Buster laughed. “That depends on who you ask. Why not?”

“Do I have to explain it to you?” She asked, daring to look back at him. He was still smiling, just a slight lift of one corner of his lips.

“You’re like me, Dot. You grew up too fast, taking care of adults who should have been taking care of you. Don’t you think you deserve to have a little fun, now? No one will know you, except me, and I’ll play along. You can pretend to be anyone you want. We can say you’re a contract dancer and I scooped you up for your smile. Or you could say you’re a long lost duchess visiting America to escape your strict royal family.”

Dot laughed, shaking her head. He was ridiculous. Impossible.

“I suppose I would wear my uniform?” She countered.

His head tilted to the side slightly, as if he hadn’t considered the fact that Dot, the maid, didn’t have a wardrobe full of evening gowns. After a moment’s hesitation, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small book and a pencil.

“What’re your measurements?” He asked casually.

“Excuse me?”

“I promise to forget them right away. I’ll get you a dress.”

“I can’t accept a dress from you.”

“So I’ll return it after tonight. I’ll act all chagrined and say you hated it.”

Dot hesitated, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She knew she should say no. Of course she couldn’t go to a hollywood party with him. To even suggest it should have been offensively oblivious. And yet, it was impossible to say no to him when he looked like this, so foolish and pleased with himself. She snatched the book and pencil from his hands and wrote down her numbers, her cheeks going red as she flipped it shut and handed it back to him.

He pocketed the book, then took her shoulders. She thought he was going to hug her, but he just held her there for a moment, and then let go. She swayed. “I’ll leave the dress wrapped in brown paper on the dining table. Take it with you when you go to your room tonight. Then, at nine o’clock, I’ll meet you at the end of the driveway.”

Dot’s heart thudded a warning even as she nodded in agreement. 

A surge of adrenaline flooded her blood later that evening when, after supper, she walked into the dining room to find the brown paper package waiting on the table, just as he promised. She picked it up with trembling hands and squirreled it away to her room. She told the other servants that she was exhausted, and she had a headache, and her feet were aching so she was going to bed early. Overkill, perhaps, but she had to be sure that they wouldn’t come knocking on her door to invite her to play cards later that night or something. She locked her door behind her and opened the package.

The dress was a dark, dusty pink and it glimmered as she lifted it from the paper. It was heavy with beads, the kind of weight that screamed Money. She only glanced in the mirror, being disturbed by the sight of herself in such a dress, before turning back to her bed to fold up the paper and place it aside for when she gave it back. It was then that she noticed that there was something else, a small box. She knew it was jewelry right away and a flash of angry bewilderment went through her. He hadn’t said anything about jewelry. Inside the box was a long string of pearls, so smooth and milky against the velvet box that she wanted to cry. One night. She’d wear it for one night, then she would give it back, just like he said. She wrapped the pearls twice around her neck, then faced the mirror fully.

She felt ridiculous.

The clock in the kitchen chimed nine o’clock, and, with no time for second thoughts, she pulled her coat over the finery and slipped as silently as she could out the window.

She was panting by the time she got to the car, from fear or excitement or merely the jog from her room, she didn’t know. Buster hopped out of the driver’s seat and came around to open the door for her, offering his hand as she climbed in.

“It fits alright?” He asked when he was back in his seat and had started the car down the road, looking at her coat as if trying to see through it to the dress underneath.

“The dress is perfect,” she said, turning in her seat slightly to look at him, so different from how he appeared that morning. Now he was wearing a black suit, with a gold watch chain across the vest underneath and a silk tie that mimicked the color of her dress. His hair was slicked and his cufflinks glittered in the passing headlights of other cars. “You look beautiful.” 

He fidgeted, turning his head to look at her for a moment before bringing his eyes back to the road as he reached for her hand. He brought her hand to his lips as he continued not to look at her then drew his thumb over the spot on her knuckles he’d kissed. He only let go of it so that he could change gears. 

At Pickfair, he helped her out of the car and Dot shrugged out of the coat, tossing it on the seat before he closed the door. 

“Look at you.” he smiled, seeing the dress on her for the first time.

“Oh, do we have to?” Dot ran her hands over the dress anxiously.

“Don’t you like it?” He asked, with puppydog eyes she recognized from his movies.

“It’s gorgeous, Buster,” she said “I’ve just never worn anything like this before.”

“You coulda fooled me.”

“Do you think I’ll fool them?” She nodded to the enormous house, lit up from the inside with many lights and the sound of music wafting on the breeze. 

“You’ll knock ‘em dead, Dot..” His words did less to reassure her than the warm weight of his hand on the small of her back as they ascended the stairs and were immediately swept into the crowd. 

The noise of it overwhelmed Dot, the brightness, the laughter, the seething of many expensive dresses and jeweled diadems on aristocratic brows. Dot had been shocked by her own dress, but now realized how simple it was compared to many of the elaborate ones she saw other women wearing. A newfound appreciation for Buster struck her when she realized that he’d probably considered her preferences while shopping for it. If at first she’d been slightly angry at him for trying to dress her up like something she wasn’t, now she understood that he’d managed to preserve her sense of modesty while also being sure she wouldn’t stick out. She told herself she should have trusted him, and promised to have more faith in him in the future. 

Buster seemed to know everyone. Or, everyone seemed to know him. Dot clung to his side, one step behind him, as he was drawn hither and yon by a multitude of friends. They would glance at her and, for the most part, ignore her. No one seemed surprised that he’d brought her and not his wife, and no one asked questions. Dot was fine with that, since anonymity was her goal anyway. No one asked who she was until they were greeted by the party hosts. Dot went cold at the sight of Mary Pickford and her husband Douglas. Mary was ten times as beautiful in real life and Douglas, well, Douglas was tall. 

“And who is this you’ve brought with you?” Mary asked Buster, smiling at Dot.

“This is…” he hesitated and Dot, in a panic, broke in.

“An old friend. Very old. Uh, we knew each other as kids. My name is...Lillian.” 

“I can only imagine this one as a kid!” Douglas said, slapping Buster’s shoulder.

“It’s marvelous to meet you, Lillian. I hope we’ll see more of you!” Mary said, just as she was pulled away by more demanding friends.

“Don’t you want to dance with Lillian?” Buster asked Douglas.

Douglas said something about reading his mind but Dot didn’t hear it over the sound of her panic. Buster saw it in her face and smiled, touching her shoulder and kissing her cheek to mask his whisper in her ear.

“Knock ‘em dead, Lillian.”

Dot was desperate to stay within Buster’s sight as she was whirled onto the dancefloor. If she lost sight of him, she feared that she wouldn’t be able to find him again and she’d be adrift in a sea of people with too much money and not enough sense to send her back where she belonged. She was relieved when, on her second turn around the floor, she saw him standing along the edge, his hands in his pockets, pretending poorly to listen to a woman speaking to him while he kept his eye on her and Douglas. 

Fairbanks was, to his credit, a marvelous dancer and he had enough conversational prowess to carry them both along. Dot gripped his shoulder tightly, feeling untethered and giddy. She tried her best to act like she had every right to be there, but she had the sneaking suspicion that everyone knew she was a liar and a fake. Her suspicions were all but confirmed when, at the end of the dance, Douglas kissed her fingers but then told her not to be so frightened.

“I’ll bring you back to the man you came with, don’t worry,” he said with a knowing smile, and led her back to Buster. 

Buster’s hand went to her hip and he held her next to him for the next few songs while he joked with some people he had apparently worked with. Drinks were put into their hands and Dot sipped at hers, pleased to be able to simply observe for a while. She tried not to stare, but he seemed like a different person. He glowed. He positively sparkled whenever he made someone else laugh, and Dot was filled with an unearned sense of pride to be the girl on his arm at least for one night. Dot was shy and quiet, but every so often he would run his fingers over her skin, reassuringly, as if to say that he hadn’t forgotten her. 

Then, out of nowhere, he would turn to one of the men nearby and ask “Don’t you want to dance with Lillian?” and he would laugh, looking more beautiful than she’d ever seen him, as she was ushered back into the fray.

“Well, Lillian. How do you feel?” he asked when she returned from a whirlwind foxtrot with Harold Lloyd. 

“A bit dizzy,” Dot laughed. 

“Need some air?”

Dot nodded. “Please, yes. Can we go outside for a bit?”

His arm wrapped behind her back, his hand resting on her hip again in a gentle grip that Dot was becoming more and more accustomed to, and they slipped out a back door onto the back terrace. People milled about here, as well, and Dot followed trustingly as Buster led her to a beautiful greenhouse further away from all the people.

“Are we allowed in here?” She asked as he pushed the door open.

“Well, try not to kill any flowers.”

The greenhouse was filled with all kinds of exotic plants and trees, but in the halflight of the moon and what filtered down from the house it was hard to appreciate them. Instead, Dot went to a work bench against one of the walls and hopped up to rest her feet, swinging them in the air. Buster sat next to her.

“My ears are ringing, it’s so quiet out here.” She said, rubbing her ankle. “And you should know that if you do that ‘don’t you want to dance with Lillian?’ thing again, I may have to scold you.” 

“It took so much convincing to even get you here, I wasn’t going to let you waste your night being shy. Now you’ll really have something to remember.”

“Oh, you were worried I’d be bored?” Dot laughed. “How thoughtful of you. Completely misguided, but thoughtful. But why not dance with me yourself?”

He looked pensieve for a moment, then he slid off the work bench, lifting her down as well as the faint music that drifted over the lawn twinkled in the distance. He held her closely as he led her in a dance, her shoulders brushing against leaves and flowers as he twirled her around the greenhouse. He was a graceful dancer, but she should have guessed that. He always had seemed like he was bursting at the seams with physical energy, fidgety and uncomfortable in his nice suits, just waiting for the next opportunity to flip or climb comething. He was a better dancer than she was, and she clung to him shamelessly, laughing against his neck as he sang the words to the song under his breath into her ear. 

The song ended, being replaced with a slower one, one so low it was hardly audible in the greenhouse. But he didn’t let go of her, instead he pulled her even closer.

“Have you forgiven me for that night?” He asked, sounding timid for the first time that day.

“I never needed to,” Dot said. “I wasn’t hurt.”

“I shouldn’t have bothered you. I shouldn’t have made my mess your problem. I’m sorry I scared you, thinking that I was...out of control or threatening. I wasn’t. I wasn’t so drunk that I didn’t know what I was doing. See Dot, I’m not sorry for kissing you. I wanted to kiss you all along. I still do.”

It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. They’d stopped dancing, and now he just held her, his eyes shining in the halflight. Every other thought went out of Dot’s head.

“Are you scared now?” His voice was a whisper and he sounded afraid himself.

Unable to find words, Dot merely shook her head minutely, feeling miles away from herself.

She felt his chest rise and fall and his hand touched the side of her face as he bent closer. His lips were an inch away from hers as the door burst open with a clatter. Buster moved quickly, pulling her deeper into the foliage.

From their hiding spot, it quickly became obvious that the other couple who’d found the greenhouse were using it to facilitate a liaison that was considerably steamier than hers and Buster’s. Dot stifled her embarrassed laughter with her hand and Buster, blushing, covered her ears with his hands. Trying not to laugh, his jerked his head towards the back of the greenhouse and they tiptoed towards a simple door at the back. Thankfully, it was unlocked, and they slipped out without being detected, running across the dewy grass. 

“Well, if I’d known this was that kind of party…” Dot laughed when they were out of earshot, catching her breath.

“This is Hollywood, Lillian. Every party is that kind of party. And this one…” his eyes scanned the house “is beginning to deteriorate. I’d better get you home.”

Dot hid her disappointment, understanding that he knew these sorts of things better than she did. They left without saying goodbye to anyone, walking around the house to the front and getting back into his car around front. 

Nervous wasn’t a word that Dot would have ever used to describe him before, but on the drive back to the villa, it was the only one that fit. He glanced at her often as he drove and twice he reached out to touch her knee. When she scooted closer to him in the front seat, he seemed to settle somewhat.

He parked on the far end of the driveway, not wanting to wake anyone up. He had experience with this, she noted. When he offered his hand to help her down from the car, he didn’t take it away again. Hand in hand, he walked with her through the grass to the side of the house where her room was. As quietly as she could, Dot eased the window open and he lifted her through.

“Did you have fun?” he whispered, touching her cheek as she stood on the other side of the open window.

“I feel like a new woman.”

His eyes went from hers to her mouth and, thoughtless and foolish as the night air had rendered her, she leaned forward slightly to encourage him. He moved quickly, as if for fear that she would change her mind. His lips met hers and Dot held her breath, suddenly feeling less like a new woman and more like herself. She remembered who she was, and who he was, and she clutched this impossible moment with all the strength she had, with a terrible awareness that, in her life, this would probably be her peak. She would never reach a greater height than kissing Buster through a window at two in the morning after a night like she had had. 

“Did you miss me?” He asked, his forehead touching hers as she caught her breath. “When I was gone.”

“I missed you terribly.”

He kissed her again. “Thank you.” and Again. “Thank you.”

She didn’t understand why he was thanking her, but when he pulled away it didn’t matter.

“Goodnight, Dot.”

“Goodnight, Buster. Will you be gone again in the morning?”

“No,” he promised. “I’ll be here.”


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Buster is late to work

Buster woke up to the now familiar gentle tapping on his door, having slept fitfully for only a few hours. Despite his exhaustion, he pulled himself into a sitting position with a light heart. 

“You look tired,” he greeted Dot as she came in with a tray of food.

“Good morning to you, too,” she said, smiling the sweet little embarrassed smile that he’d come to adore. It had only been a few hours since he’d kissed her through her bedroom window, but the hours between had stretched on so long that it felt like ages since he’d seen her. He’d not been able to get her face out of his mind, and yet seeing it in person felt like a revelation.

“I don’t normally stay up late. We can’t all subsist on cigarettes and sheer force of will, like some people,” she continued pointedly, rolling the tray up to his bedside and pouring the coffee. 

“Will you have a hard time today because I kept you out so late?” Buster asked, taking a sip from the cup then handing it off to her casually. She’d refused to go so far as to bring up her own cup in the mornings, despite him telling her she should, but he’d found that he could get her to have a cup of coffee with him if he did it like this.

“I’m sure I’ll survive,” she assured him, testing the temperature of coffee and taking a sip, then handing it back to him. “I’m young yet. If I can’t manage one day of work after a long night then there must be something wrong with me. Do you have a busy day planned?”

It was almost as if nothing had changed. Dot perched on the side of his bed as the sun rose, asking him about his schedule and sipping his coffee, just like usual, only this morning Buster had the distinct awareness of how happy he was to wake up like this day after day. He watched her lips as she chattered soothingly about the weather, remembering how soft they’d been and wondering if she’d let him kiss her again if he tried just then. A part of him doubted it. The separateness of the greenhouse and the obscurity of moonlight had passed. Lillian was gone, and now it was just Buster and Dot, Master and Maid, once again.

“Oh, I nearly forgot,” she said, bending down to retrieve a package from under the breakfast cart. “The dress and the pearls. Thank you again.” She put the brown paper package on his lap.

“Please, keep them,” he said, pushing the package back to her.

“We agreed that you’d return them,” Dot protested gently, pushing it back.

“That was before I saw you in them,” he attempted, but Dot was having none of it.

“I don’t have any need for a dress like this.”

“The pearls then.”

“I’ve even less need for a string of pearls.” She was smiling, but behind the placating expression was a will of iron evident in the subtle set of her jaw. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful. But it feels...like charity. I’m not this woman,” she said, sliding her finger underneath the string of the package.

“Alright, Dot,” Buster relented. “I’ll be a good boy and do as you say.”

Dot scoffed and Buster watched a bloom of pink rise to her cheeks. He wondered if he’d ever met a girl who blushed as easy as Dot did. There was something charming about how poorly she hid her feelings. Perhaps it was the comfort in knowing that he could trust her, because she’d never be able to tell him a lie with a face like hers.

“You should be dressed by now,” she said, and Buster hopped up, realizing she was right, and hastened through the rest of his morning routine. With his shirt buttoned and his hair smoothed, he stood with a patient grin on his face as Dot did up his tie. She didn’t always, he was perfectly capable of doing it himself, but this wasn’t the first time she had done his tie for him. Always unexpectedly, she would step right up to him, deft little fingers rising to his throat, and she would avoid his eyes as she set his collar to rights. His heart would race at her nearness and his shoulders would ache with the impulse to hug her. Would she allow it now, after last night?

“Dot?” 

“Hm?” Her hands were still on his collar and she looked up at him. He must have been as bad at hiding his feelings as she was, because she seemed to understand him at once. He saw the recognition in her eyes as it shifted into encouragement and she tilted her chin towards him, very slightly but unmistakably all the same, just like she had at the window the night before. With no windowsill between them this time, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him when he kissed her. She threw her arms around his neck and yielded, her body going soft in his arms. He kissed her deeply, gripping her tight. Perhaps too tight. It occurred to him that he might be ashamed of how eager he was, how needy. She didn’t pull away from him, though, so he allowed himself to cling as much as she would let him.

“You’ll be late,” she whispered breathlessly, touching her forehead to his.

“I don’t care,” he nuzzled against her cheek.

Dot chuckled. “Oh yes you do. Now hurry along.”

He’d never been more reluctant to leave his bedroom and head to the studio, but he did as she told him.

Dot inhaled deeply when Buster left the room and took the stairs two at a time. Flattered as she’d been at his announcement that he didn’t mind being late, it was funny to watch him hightail it out the front door. The truth was, no one cared about their work more than Buster did. Even if it meant cutting a kiss short, she liked that about him.

She closed his bedroom door and went to splash cool water on her face from his bathroom sink. Natalie hadn’t returned home yet, but if Dot looked half as flustered and tousled as she felt, she couldn’t risk leaving this room yet. She took a few settling breaths,smoothing her hair in the mirror. Her hands were still shaking even as she made his bed and gathered up the breakfast cart.

When Natalie returned home that afternoon, Dot’s stomach roiled guiltily with the awful knowledge that she’d kissed Natalie’s husband more recently than Natalie had. She felt sick all afternoon, like a seasickness borne from the constant pitching between the giddy highs when she was with Buster and the terrible guilt when she was not. 

Dot was on the stairs polishing the banister when she heard Buster coming home. She turned to greet him before realizing that he wasn’t alone. Buster shot her an almost panicked glance from where he stood with a man Dot recognized as Louis Mayer, but it was too late. She remembered being introduced to him the night before and Mayer clearly remembered it too. She winced at his smile.

“Lillian.” The man with the round glasses said, clearly taking in her uniform before glancing all too knowingly at Buster. “How lovely to see you again. It was a marvelous party wasn’t it?”

“Buster, you impossible man, you didn’t tell me you were bringing a guest for dinner.” Natalie’s voice, calm and charming, came from behind Dot as she swooped past to shake Mayer’s hand. Dot cringed, wishing that the staircase would swallow her up on the spot. “Dorothy, run along to the kitchen and be sure the arrangements are made.”

Like a reflex, Dot dropped a curtsy and dashed down the stairs, her eyes stinging. In the kitchen, Dot fluttered anxiously from one task to the next, helping the cook and desperately trying to blot out her embarrassment with busyness, but when it came time to bring the food up to serve, Dot feigned a headache.

“I can’t, I’m sorry. I need to lay down. Will you manage without me?” she asked the others.

“Of course, but Dot, maybe you ought to ask a doctor about those headaches?” the cook said.

Remembering how she’d used the headache lie the night before and kicking herself for being so terrible at this, Dot promised that she would see a doctor soon and locked herself in her room. She sank into a chair, her mind reeling, trying in vain to calculate how likely it was that Natalie had seen enough to put two and two together and trying to forget the way that man had smiled at Buster, so smug and knowing. “How tawdry, an affair with a maid. Good for you, ol’ boy” he seemed to say. Dot burned bitterly, knowing how true that was. It was tawdry. How could she have been so stupid? How could she not have seen it until she was forced to see it through the spectacled eyes of a businessman she hardly knew?

She waited that evening for Natalie’s bell to ring for her, but it never came. With every passing moment, as the pot of tea that Natalie normally had before bed was growing cold, Dot grew more terrified. She began to make plans for what she would do when she was fired. When the bell did ring, it wasn’t Natalie, but Buster. 

“Dot, are you alright?” he asked when she came into his room with a tray of toast.

“Does Natalie know? She didn’t ring for me,” she asked, setting the tray on the dresser. He never ate the toast, it was just an excuse to say goodnight to her. Another lie.

“She didn’t? She went to bed early so Mayer and I could talk business.”

“Does she know?” Dot felt desperate.

“Know? No, she doesn’t know anything. I’m not sure she heard. And anyway, Louis caught on right away and said no more of it.”

“Oh Buster,” Dot covered her face with her hands “I’m not elegant enough for this.”

“What?” Buster stepped forward, wrapping one arm around her back and using the other hand to take her hands from her face. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Other women can...can just light a cigarette and put their nose in the air like they don’t care what people think. There’s an air of glamour and...and mystery around it when women like that step out with other people’s husbands. But there’s nothing glamorous about me and I do care what people think. I care terribly. With a girl like me it’s just sordid. I’m so ashamed.”

“Sordid? No. Darling, I don’t--please don’t cry.” Buster stroked the tears that Dot couldn’t hold back off of her cheek, holding her tight and brushing his hand over her upper arm as if trying to warm her. “Please don’t cry. This is all my fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Dot sniffed, shaking her head. He hugged her tighter, tucking her head under his chin, murmuring and shushing her gently as she cried.

“What can I do, huh? What do you want?” he asked when she’d settled down somewhat. He touched his index finger under her chin and tilted her face up to look at him. “I’ll do anything you ask if you promise not to cry anymore.”

“You must not ever kiss me again,” Dot said.

Buster froze for a moment, not saying anything. He blinked. Then, finally, “If that’s what you want.”

Dot squeezed her eyes shut to keep from crying again like a ridiculous child. It wasn’t what she wanted at all. She wanted him to kiss her again right that very minute. That was exactly the problem, any time she was with him she wanted stupid, impossible things that would bring her nothing but trouble. 

“We’ll be just as we were before, okay?” He added. “And of course, if Natalie asks about the party or anything like that, well I’ll just tell the truth. I talked you into it, and you were just too shy and polite to tell me to get lost.”

Dot searched Buster’s eyes, trying to tell if he really believed that was the truth. 

“It’s late,” he continued. “You should be getting to bed.”

“Yes, sir.” Dot said, smoothing her hands over the front of her apron and trying to compose herself. She took a step away from the warmth of his embrace.

“Now that’s too far. You called me Buster before last night. Don’t stop now.”

Dot nodded, looking down at her feet and edging towards the door. “Alright. Goodnight Buster.”

“Goodnight.”

Dot slept more deeply than she had in a long time that night, reduced to exhaustion after crying into her pillow from an overwhelming mixture of misery and relief.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Buster runs away from home.

Buster missed her. Weeks passed, and he and Dot had managed so far to return to the way things were before, at least that could be seen from the outside. She came up every morning to wake him up and see him out the door, but she no longer would sit on the edge of his bed and sip his coffee. She kept her hands folded in front of her and wouldn’t offer to help him with his tie. His pulse still raced in her presence, and his mind was in turmoil all the time, warring between his desire to hold her and his need to respect her wishes. 

Despite how deeply he cared for her, Buster understood perfectly why she would forbid any more contact between them. At his mother-in-law’s suggestion, he’d been carrying on discreet romantic affairs for several years, and he was all too familiar with the sickening crush of guilt and the way that a troubled conscience poisoned every other aspect of life. He wasn’t selfish enough to insist that Dot carry that burden as well. So, with admitted difficulty, he kept his hands and thoughts to himself.

It hurt to see her though, standing so placid and calm while a bitter storm seethed inside him. He told himself that he should be glad that Dot wasn’t tormented as he was, that her peace should be his peace, but no amount of rational thought could cancel out his desire to be wanted. More than anything, he wanted her to love him and be anguished that she couldn’t be with him. He spent half of his time comforting himself with fantasies about her weeping over him, crying herself to sleep night after night with a broken heart, and the other half of the time he spent berating himself for taking comfort in the thought of her suffering. 

“Will you be home tonight?” Dot asked as he headed out one morning. He’d taken to staying out late at parties more than usual, hoping to lessen the strain of being near her too often. 

“Late, maybe.” A kiss before leaving for work would be so natural, so effortless, so easy that he slammed his hat on his head and hurried out, not knowing what else to do or what more there was to say.

At work, Buster was given a respite from worrying about Dot due to the constant bickering with Lawrence Weingarten, the MGM producer who seemed to have gotten the idea that, with no experience, he knew how to make a picture better than Buster did. Incessant headbutting turned out to be a good way to knock thoughts of women out of his mind altogether and Buster occasionally considered hiring Lawrence to come home with him and annoy him around the clock. 

Still, Buster had to come home sometime, after the long hours of work and long hours of partying. His room was always silently waiting for him, empty and cold in a house so huge and grand that it seemed impossible that there couldn’t be room for him there. But there wasn’t. He lay in bed that night, restless and uncomfortable, feeling like an interloper in his own home. Hours passed and still he couldn’t fall asleep so finally, he gave up trying. He sat up with an agitated sigh and crossed the room to the window, whose curtain he thrust aside.

The moon was full and frantically bright that night, illuminating the large staircase that led down the back of the house to the pool. His breath caught in his throat when he noticed the shape of a girl standing near the edge of the pool, staring down at the glimmering lines of moonlight that bounced off the water. Dot couldn’t sleep either. 

To his credit, Buster did make an attempt at refraining from going down to her, thinking that when someone wanders around the grounds in their nightgown in the middle of the night, they probably weren’t expecting to be sociable. He told himself, as he wrapped himself in a soft robe, that if she acted like she didn’t want him there, he would go back to his room without waiting for her to ask him to. 

He hurried out the back doors, but slowed down as he reached the bottom of the steps, not wanting to startle her. She had sat down by then, her slippers on the tile next to her, and was dipping her feet in the pool, lazily stirring up little ripples that glided silently across the water. He saw her notice him, glancing over her shoulder before tightening the fringed shawl she had on over her arms. When she didn’t say anything, he sat down next to her.

“I got a letter from my mother this morning,” she said after a few moments of continued silence. “They got two feet of snow in Michigan last week.” She chuckled quietly, watching her own feet.

“It’s hard to miss being cold, but sometimes I do miss the snow.”

“There’s no seasons here. Maybe that’s part of why it all feels so artificial. Hollywood…” her train of thought seemed to carry on without her and she lapsed into silence again.

“How is your mother doing?” Buster finally asked, the roaring inside him at painful odds with the lingering silence.

“Well enough. Not healthy, she likely never will be that again, and it always feel a bit precarious, but she’s well enough at the moment.”

“You must miss them.”

“Everything is more comfortable here,” she began. “I never wonder where my next meal will come from, the only person who’s time I have to manage is my own, I get to live in this beautiful mansion. I’m safe here. And it’s never very cold. But yes, I miss them. When I moved away, I thought I wouldn’t. I left out of duty, as you know, but I would have left anyway even if I needed to make up an excuse. I was tired of being a parent to my siblings and I think I resented them. Being away has made me love them again.”

“I understand that.”

A smile spread over Dot’s lips and she glanced up at him from the corner of her eye. “I expected that you would, else I wouldn’t have told you.”

Buster laughed. “Fair enough.”

Once again, silence fell around them and Buster grasped for something to say.

“Do...do ya want me to go?” he asked when nothing came to him. All he could think to tell her was how much he missed her, and he knew if he did that she really would tell him to leave her alone.

She shook her head, staring down at her feet in the water. “No. I don’t want you to go. I got up because I couldn’t sleep, and I slipped out half hoping that I would catch you coming home or something.”

“You can always come to my room. If you need someone, I mean.”

Dot swallowed thickly then looked up at him. It was dark enough that his vision was drained of color, but the silvery moonlight glinted off her eyes, betraying the fact that they were brimming with unshed tears. “No I can’t,” she whispered.

Buster nodded and turned away, offering her a chance to wipe away a tear without comment. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she said.

“I miss you terribly.”

“I know,” she repeated. “I can see it in your face every morning.”

“Has it been easy for you?”

“Of course not.”

Buster sighed, slouching forward and leaning on his hands to stare into the pool. “You always seem so cool and calm.”

Dot chuckled, making him look back at her. “Maybe I should be in pictures after all, if that’s true.”

“Maybe you should,” he grinned. “I may be leaving soon. I’m not sure how long I will be gone,” he continued, leaning back again.

”Where?”

“New York. These producers are doing their damndest to keep me under their thumb but they couldn’t make a funny picture if someone gave them an instruction book. I’ve tried. Filming on location and putting some space between them and me might be my best bet to make them a good movie.”

“Oh.”

He paused. “And because if we’re going to be friends, I can’t see you every day. Maybe by the time I get back it will be different, but I can’t be in this house right now. You’re too close.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be. When I get back, everything will be better, okay? No more glum faces,” he said, more to himself than to her. 

Dot nodded bravely. “Okay.”

“You’d better get yourself to bed.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, lifting her feet out of the pool and picking up her slippers as she got to her feet and he watched her pad back to the house.  
\--

Only two days later she was helping him rummage through his room, packing for his trip.

“You’re FLYING to New York?” she asked incredulously.

“Did you think I was walking there?” he laughed, bundling pairs of socks together.

“Well I assumed you’d take a train. Or the car. I’m green with envy now, I’ve always wanted to fly.”

“You never have?”

Dot arched a brow at the occasionally oblivious movie star. “You know, sometimes I think you forget that I’m not rich and famous like SOME people I know. I dont happen to have a plane, no. Nor do I know a great many people who have them.”

“You know me. I’ll take you up sometime,” he said with a casual shrug.

“Do you promise?” She’d stopped folding clothes and sat on the floor, a warm sweater that served no purpose in L.A. but would be essential in New York, sat bundled and forgotten in her lap.

“I promise.”

“Really?”

Buster laughed. “I swear on my mother’s bible that I will take you up in the plane some day.”

Dot narrowed her eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m deciding whether or not that particular oath carries any weight.”

“Alright then. I swear on my best camera that I will take you up in a plane some day.”

“Now that’s a promise I can have faith in,” she said, returning to her task. “On the day, you must promise to MAKE me get on the plane though. I want to go in one, but I’m scared too and may try to act like I’ve changed my mind. Drag me on if you have to.”

“I can’t force you into a plane,” he laughed.

“No, I’m serious, Buster. I’m giving you permission to. Don’t let fear keep me from doing what I want.”

Buster raised his brows doubtfully. “I may need to get this request in writing.”

Calling his bluff, Dot crossed to his desk and pulled out a pad of paper. As Buster chuckled and stuffed his other belongings into his trunk, she scribbled out a note and handed it to him.

“I, the undersigned, do hereby grant Mr. Joseph “Buster” Keaton permission to drag me physically into an airplane one (1) time.” the note read, with Dot’s pretty cursive signature at the bottom.

Buster laughed, carefully folding the note in half and sliding it into his wallet. 

“Mrs. Keaton and the boys have already left for the day,” Dot said.

“We said our goodbyes at breakfast,” he said, closing the lid of the trunk and locking it with a sense of finality.

“Then I guess it’s time.” Dot said. “And you don’t know when you’ll be back?”

“Not yet.” Buster touched Dot’s cheek, studying her face as if he had any fear of forgetting every detail of it. Taking a risk, he leaned down and kissed her cheek. She closed her eyes, but stood still until he straightened back up. “As soon as I find out when I’ll be headed back, I will let you know.”

“Okay. Can you carry that on your own?” She nodded towards the trunk on his bed.

“It’s not heavy.” To prove it he hoisted the trunk with one arm and crossed to the stairs. Dot walked with him as far as the front door.

“You be good while I’m gone,” he said with a teasing smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. She returned the halfhearted smile and he piled into the car, listening for the click of the front door as she closed it after him.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one with the letters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I just wanted to mention how grateful I am for all the kudos and especially the nice comments you've been leaving me here and on tumblr. I'm not 100% confident about the unspoken etiquette rules of A03 which is the only reason I've hesitated to reply to comments, but I appreciate them so much and I go back and re-read them whenever I'm feeling discouraged xD.
> 
> There's only six more chapters outlined for this fic. This chapter is kind of the calm before the storm before the ending. Depending on the timing, I may end up also posting a "christmas special" that would be kind of an aside to the story, but I've got an idea I think would be cute.
> 
> Thank you so much, again!

Dot,  
I hope you don’t actually have an Aunt Minnie in Delaware, because if you do I’d hate to disappoint you. This is Buster. The fake address is so eyebrows stay where they should when this letter is delivered downstairs. I hope you don’t mind receiving it.

You were interested in my flight, so I’ll tell you that it was as uneventful as anyone could hope a flight would be. The snow in Denver was really something else. I wonder if you’ve been to Colorado? I remember during your interview when you mentioned Michigan I was interested because I used to live there too. I guess I’ve lived lots of places. Have you only been to Michigan and California, then? 

I want to say that you’d like New York but I don’t know if you would, really. You said you missed the snow, and there’s snow here now, but it’s been here a few days already and now it’s just dirty slush. We are hoping it will melt soon, because it’s not supposed to be snowy in the scenes we’re filming here. I say we’re hoping for that, but I think I’m privately hoping it snows a little more, just to cover the dirt for a few days. Fresh snow in the city is pretty. That’s one thing I’m sure you would like.

You’ve really spoiled me, you know. Spoiled rotten to the core. Getting myself out of bed in the morning has been a trial. And coming back at night without someone there to talk to about what I did that day has been strange too. I might get a dog or something, just to have someone to wait up for me. That’s actually why I’m writing this. It’s just past midnight here. I could go down to the hotel restaurant and find someone to talk to, and I might still do that, but I miss you already. All that “I need space to sort myself out” talk didn’t last long, huh? Oh well, I’m not ashamed. We never said we wouldn’t be friends anyway, and you are my friend, Dot, aren’t you?

You talked about how the warm winters in California made everything seem artificial. I agreed with you then, but I think it’s easier to love the cold from afar.   
I know my boys get all the female attention they can handle from the Talmadges, but slip them an extra cuddle from me, if you get the chance. I’ve got it on good authority that they like you more than you realize. Maybe that has to do with the fact you aren’t the one drilling them in math, but it’s not the only reason either.  
Please write me soon. I’m in suite 102 in the Ambassador Hotel.

X,   
Buster

PS. There, see that smudge in the top corner? I dropped the letter in the snow on the way to breakfast. It’s too long to rewrite, and anyway this is as close I can get to sending you snow in the mail.

 

+++  
Buster,  
I don’t have an Aunt Minnie in Delaware, but you didn’t have to introduce yourself anyway. I recognized your handwriting. The flourishes on the envelope were a nice touch though, I didn’t know it was you until I opened it. Sneaky things like this were what I was intending to avoid, but I was so excited to get a letter from New York City that I forgave you right away. And yes, we are friends. Of course we are. 

It’s true, I’ve only seen Michigan, California, and what can see seen through train windows between the two. New York City seems almost fictional in my mind. It may as well be Paris or Greece for how far removed it is from me. So, even though I’m sure it’s all terribly business-like and routine for you, please tell me as much as you can. Has the snow melted by now? Is it very loud all the time? In my mind I imagine the whole city to be just screamingly loud all day long.

Are you really going to get a dog? And all because you miss me waiting up for you at night? First of all, you shouldn’t imply that a girl can be so easily replaced with a dog, or you’re liable to hurt someone’s feelings. Not mine, of course, I just mean in general. Secondly, dogs are an awful lot of responsibility, you know. You’ll have to feed it and take it for walks and make sure it receives proper training so that it doesn’t wreak havoc on the house. Especially because if you don’t, it’ll be me who ends up mending torn upholstery and buffing out nail scuffs on the floors. 

Last week was my birthday. Now I know you’re going to be sore about not knowing about it in advance but don’t feel bad, Buster, because I don’t expect you to know things that no one’s told you. To tell the truth it sort of snuck up on me, too. I ended up getting the day off from work with pay. A whole day all to myself was the best present I think I could have gotten, and since my wages come from you, we can say that it was your gift to me. So thank you, sir, for my birthday present. I’ve gotten so used to being busy that I hardly knew what to do with myself during my time off. I wandered around the shops aimlessly for a while, and when I saw a display of pretty wool yarn, I had a little laugh to myself wondering how many people living in hollywood know how to knit. It can’t be all that many. Then I remembered your poorly veiled complaints about the cold and I bought it. Then I holed myself up in a nice quiet corner of a park and knitted you the mittens that I’m sending with this letter. They’re not quite the fashionable leather gloves that most men in your position wear, but they’re warm, and I thought that you might appreciate them. One Michiganian to another.

This letter has gotten away from me. Everyone misses you terribly and hopes filming is going well.

Yours truly,  
Dot.

 

+++  
Dot,  
First you tell me that I missed your birthday, then you tell me that you spent the whole day making a present for me? I can’t let that stand. You’ve noticed already the jewelry box that’ll arrive with this letter. It’s your Aunt Minnie’s heirloom earrings that she’s passing on to her favorite niece in her old age. In reality, it’s your real birthday present from me. I know you’re antsy about accepting gifts, so I’ll have you know that these earrings were on sale and originally bought to be worn by the girl in the picture, but it turns out she hasn’t got pierced ears in the first place. They’ll go to waste if you don’t wear them, Dot. 

I’ll ignore the fact that I, a father of two, was given the “pets are a big responsibility” talk from a twenty four year old. (Twenty five now, isn’t it?) I’ve reconsidered the dog though, now I’m thinking about a monkey. What would you think of a monkey in the house?

Since you’re so good at reading between the lines, I’ll just tell you that I’m not having such an easy time of things here. I miss being home and the snow has melted, which is good because it means I can film and start getting this trip over with, but it’s bad because now it’s just cold without the benefit of being pretty. I can’t stand the crowds. Everywhere I go I’m suddenly swamped with people, even when I’m just trying to shoot an inconspicuous street scene. I know how ungrateful it seems to complain about being famous, but since we’re friends I know I can tell you how I feel. It seems like any move I try to make for this picture instantly gets blocked somehow, whether by the management or by the crowds. I don’t want to bore you with business talk, but I’m worried that I’ve made a big mistake. I already miss the way things were before.

I’m about ready to throw in the towel in here and see if I can make some sense of this script and what footage we’ve managed to get back at home. Maybe my troubles with work seem worse than they really are because I’m cold and lonely in New York. 

I say I’m cold, but I mean with the exception of my hands. Thank you for the mittens. They’re the nicest I’ve ever had, and I keep them with me even when I’m not wearing them. It’s been a long time since I’ve had something handmade, and I even surprised myself with how much I appreciate it. 

As soon as you’ve read this, do me a favor and go dip your toes in the pool on my behalf, then keep your fingers crossed that I’ll be back home in the sun soon.

X,  
Aunt Minnie in Delaware


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dot has a loyal, trustworthy air about her.

The tone in Buster’s letters from New York became despondent. Though the frequency of them stayed the same, typically Dot would receive one letter each week, they grew shorter, and his voice got lost in them. They began to sound like placeholder letters, things anyone could have written, and she could no longer hear him speaking when she read them. Dot worried, and she worried that no one else seemed worried.

Natalie also received letters, and phone calls as well. When Dot was around her, she tried to subtly determine if Natalie had noticed a change in her husband, but it was impossible to tell without asking her outright and revealing the fact that he had been writing Dot. If it was possible, Natalie became become even more withdrawn and tight lipped. Dot began to doubt her own memory of a time where she had thought or hoped that she and Natalie could have been friends or confidantes. Now Natalie spent almost every day out of the house, with her sisters usually. Or shopping. Natalie had before mentioned almost daily that she was determined to find another maid to finally fill the position that Sally, the lady’s maid, had left vacant so long ago. She never talked about that anymore, because with the house so frequently empty, there was hardly enough work for Dot and Madge to fill the day.

A strange quiet fell over the villa while Buster was gone. Even the children seemed quieter and less awake. They preferred to be with their aunts rather than at home. Dot made many more attempts to befriend the other servants, to try to fill up the uneasy quiet, but beyond the nightly card games it was difficult to find companionship. She was still the youngest person employed by the Keatons, and if the other servants felt anything for her it was more along the lines of parental responsibility than friendship.

Dot wondered if she was the only one who woke every morning praying that Buster would surprise them all by returning home unannounced.

When he did come home, it was unannounced, as she had always suspected it would be. He arrived in the middle of the night, but no one knew until the morning when, as Dot sat in the kitchen waiting for the day to begin, Buster called down.

“Good morning, Dot. I’m home. Won’t you bring me up something to eat?” His voice in her ear on the phone felt like a memory of a dream. Her face lit up and Dot felt a great heaviness lift off her shoulders.

“Of course. I’ll be right up,” she replied through a smile, and she had to restrain herself from leaping up the stairs two at a time with her tray in her hands. When she knocked on the door, carefully balancing the tray on her hip, he opened it so quickly it was like he’d been waiting on the other side of the door. He smiled so broadly at her when he let her in that it took Dot a moment or two to notice how tired he looked.

“You said nothing about coming home in your last letter,” she chastised gently. 

“It was kind of spur-of-the-moment. And anyway I wanted to make an entrance. The timing was bad though, I got in around three in the morning when everyone was asleep.”

“You could have woken me.” She herded him back to his bed where he sat down and she placed the breakfast tray over his lap.

He chuckled. “Last time I tapped on your window at 3am you nearly bashed me over the head with a hairbrush.”

Dot looked up at him from the coffee cup she’d been stirring milk into and for a moment they locked glances, both remembering the second time he’d been at her window and they’d shared a kiss in the dark, and both knowing that the other was remembering that time too.

“That feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? It’s funny, I was so honored that, fall-over drunk, you’d thought of me as someone trustworthy to help you out.” Dot kept her voice breezy.

“You have a loyal, trustworthy air about you,” he teased, biting into a piece of toast with raspberry jam.

“Oh, good,” she laughed.

“I’m not staying, Dot.”

She froze. “Where are you going?”

Buster lifted the tray and got up to put it on the nightstand, then leaned against the window frame, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning his head back slightly. He’d been travelling all night, Dot reminded herself when the shadows across his face from the single lamp made him look like he was ill.

“They’ve got a little bungalow for me on the lot down at MGM. Better than driving there every day.”

A hundred thoughts went through Dot’s mind. Isn’t he happy to see me? Is he angry? Did he and Natalie fight? Did I do something wrong?

“Oh,” was all she said. A dumb little syllable that hung in the air.

He tilted his head to the side. “Are you angry?”

“Me? No, of course not. I’m just--no, I’m not angry.”

“It’s for the best, I think.” he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and shoving his hands in his pockets. His gaze flicked away from Dot and regarded instead the room around them, resting lazily on the doorframe and the high ceiling. “I sunk so much time and money into this dump. I kind of hate to be here, now. I feel ridiculous in it. No, it’s better to stay in a small place and focus on work.”

In that moment he did look awfully small in the large room.

“Won’t Natalie object?” Dot countered, looking for any way to keep him there without betraying too much of a personal interest.

“She’s pleased to be rid of me.”

“Oh hush, Buster. You don’t really believe that.”

The corner of his mouth lifted and he took one hand out of his pocket, extending it to her. Dot took it and he pulled her into a hug, nuzzling his nose into her hair.

“I already feel so much better for seeing you. Culver City isn’t so very far away. I won’t be a stranger.”

Dot nodded, but she didn’t believe him for a moment. He could make a stranger of himself in his own bedroom, let alone forty miles away.

When he leaned away, he placed both of his hands on her upper arms, holding her at arm’s length as if to memorize her face.

“Don’t tell Nat I’m here yet.” He grinned mischievously. “I want to see if I can still surprise her.”

Dot smiled, putting her finger to her lips.

\-----  
Dot would never know if Buster had knowingly told a lie when he said that his moving out of the Villa wouldn’t make him a stranger, or if he’d really believed it that morning in his bedroom. Either way, her suspicions at the time were proven correct over the next year. 

The house became accustomed to his not being there, but Dot never did. She dusted the same empty rooms day after day, thankful to Natalie for sending her on pointless errands to at least keep up the appearance of her station in the house having some sort of purpose. Dot felt conspicuously redundant, and took to spending more time playing with Joey and Bobby to at least give the impression that she was still useful to the household. Buster had been right about the young boys liking her, though she’d been too shy to notice at the time. 

When he did come back to the Villa, it was as if he were a guest in his own home. He kept his jacket on and held his hat in his hands. He and Natalie would have lunch together on the lawn, or sit in the living room for an hour. Even when he stayed the night, or for a weekend, he never seemed to settle. At the door, Dot longed to tell him how much she missed their quiet mornings, but there was never a right time to say it. If he missed her, he kept it to himself.

Occasionally rumors would travel up from Culver City, rumors of parties and affairs and hints of a growing temper in Buster that Dot had never suspected. When news of these things got to Natalie, she would press her lips into a tight line and slip into a restrained mania, scheduling a hundred outings with the boys and attending parties of her own. Many times, Dot wished she was brave enough to simply confess to Natalie how she cared for Buster, so at least they could worry together. She never worked up the nerve though, so the two women suffered together in silence.

Now, when a movie was released, she would go to see it with Madge and the others and, instead of enjoying the picture, she would sit in the theater and study Buster’s performance with an anxious sort of diligence, looking for any sign that might tell her how he was doing. If he was alright.

One night, Dot had been asleep only an hour or two when a knock came to her bedroom door. Wrapping her robe tight around her, she opened it to find Madge, bleary-eyes and annoyed.

“Phone call for you. It had better be an emergency, it’s the middle of the night.”

Dot bit back a sharp retort, that she was well aware that it was the middle of the night. Dread had risen like bile in her stomach at Madge’s words, and she went to the phone, fearing that it had to do with her mother. Perhaps she had finally died.

“Hello?”

“Is this Dot?” A woman’s voice asked. She sounded sharp and awake in Dot’s ear.

“Yes, who is this?”

“Oh, it’s Louise,” the woman said rather flippantly, as if that cleared up everything. Dot didn’t know any Louise. “I hate to call in a favor so late at night, but a cab has been sent to the Villa and you need to get in it. We’ve tried to manage him ourselves but he’s asking for you.”

“I don’t understand--”

“He’ll be fine. A touch too much to drink, and he threw a bit of a fit. He’s convinced himself that the sky is falling, and he’s asking for you. Buster, I mean. I’m talking about Buster, didn’t I say so?”

“Tell him I’m coming. When will the cab be here?” Dot said, glancing at Madge who was standing near the kitchen. The older woman nodded, not knowing what was happening but understanding that it was urgent, and that she would need to cover for Dot in the morning. Dot told herself to remember to thank her later.

“Good girl. Soon, I should think.”

They said their hasty goodbyes and Dot hurried back to her room. She dressed quickly by the light of the moon, wrapping herself in a coat. On her way out, Madge stopped her.

“Everything alright?”

“Oh--” Dot looked anxiously out the door, seeing headlights coming up the drive. “An old friend needs me. I’ll call in the morning. I don’t expect to be gone long.”

Madge nodded and, unexpectedly, wrapped Dot in a sudden hug. When dot got into the cab and glanced in the rearview mirror, she understood why. She looked terrified. The drive to the MGM lot felt like it took all night. Dot sat on the edge of her seat, tearing at her nails with her teeth, wondering how bad it could be that Buster would ask for her, of all people. They’d hardly spoken a word to each other in months.

The cab dropped her off in front of a long, skinny little house. A wooden sign that read “Keaton’s Kennel” swung from the roof over the porch. She would have smiled at that if she had the time, but she hurried up the steps and knocked.

The door swung open enthusiastically, the warm light from inside spilling onto the dark porch.

“Oh, aren’t you cute. I told you she’d be cute!” Louise smiled, raising her voice over her shoulder into the house.

Dot would never have guessed that the Louise on the phone was Louise Brooks. Of course it made sense now that Dot was standing with her hair unbrushed and not a trace of lipstick on, face to face with one of the most glamorous women of the screen. Dot smoothed her braid over her shoulder, half terrified to step inside and see what other golden gods of hollywood were lurking beyond the front door.

“Buster?” She asked.

“He’s in his room,” Louise said. “Hiding,” she added in a stage whisper.

“I tried everything,” Louise explained as she ushered Dot in, closing the door behind her. Dot watched her own feet. “But he just doesn’t want to be consoled. Not by me, anyway. Say, what’s that?”

Dot lifted up the jar of the old hangover cure. “He’ll want this in the morning.”

“Oh good, so you’ve done this before.” Louise pushed open a door towards the back of the house off a long hallway. “He’s all yours.”

The room was so dark, Dot had to stand still just inside for a bit, waiting for her eyes to adjust. When she could make out the shape of a curtained window, she walked carefully towards it and pushed the curtains open, allowing the milky moonlight to illuminate the room. For a moment she thought Louise was mistaken, and that the room was empty, but then came the soft rustling sound of someone shifting under blankets and she determined that the vague shape on the bed, curled into the corner, was Buster.

Dot sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, laying her hand on what she guessed was his shoulder under the mass of blankets. 

“I’m here, Buster.”

“Dot?” His voice was muffled by blankets.

“You asked for me, so I came.”

“If I move, I’ll throw up.”

Now that she could see more clearly, Dot noticed the evidence of Louise’s attempts to help him. There was a tall glass of water on the nightstand next to a small plate with plain crackers on it. And a bucket nearby.

“Your friends have you all set up here. There’s a bucket. I don’t mind if you throw up.”

For a long pause, he still wouldn’t move, but then he sat up very slowly, keeping his head down. His intuition, always so dependable, turned out to be true in this case too. After a few beats of him sitting up, staring around blindly, he lurched forward. Dot brought the bucket up between his knees and held it, rubbing between his shuddering shoulder blades as he emptied his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he groaned.

“I don’t mind it. I’ve seen worse.”

“I shouldn’t have asked for you. This is terrible. You should be sleeping.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Do you want to go?”

“No.” Dot answered simply. “I’m always happy to see you.”

He gave an odd sort of joyless laugh that sounded like something caught between a bark and a cough. 

“I mean it.” She brushed a strand of hair off of his forehead, which was clammy and slick with sweat. “All done for now?”

Buster nodded and she reached for the cup of water with her free hand

“Drink some water. Sip it very slowly.” She put the glass of water in his hands, and he wrapped both hands around it but didn’t move to drink it.

“Come on. Why send for me if you won’t do as I say? If you can’t drink it, at least swish and spit so your teeth don’t rot.”

He brought the glass to his lips and obediently swished the room temperature water around his mouth before spitting it in the bucket. Dot put the bucket down and pushed it away from the bed carefully with her foot.

“You’ll feel better soon. Better out than in. Do try to sip the water though.”

“I don’t know what happened, Dot. I just started panicking. I was fine one minute, then, I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. All of a sudden everything was so grim and awful.” He was rambling drunkenly, his voice hoarse as if he’d been yelling. She wondered if he had been. Louise had said he’d thrown a fit.

“I’m here now. It’ll be alright.”

“You’re here,” he repeated.

“I’m here.”

“You have a...a loyal, trustworthy air about you.”

Dot laughed, and when he leaned into her she embraced him snugly, gently scratching her nails up and down his back through his shirt. He smelled of whiskey and sweat and sick, but she squeezed him anyway.

“Your heart is racing,” she whispered.

“I noticed that too. I may be dying.”

“Oh hush, Buster.”

He stayed there motionless in her arms for so long that she began to think he’d fallen asleep, half sitting, half leaning against her shoulder.

“I haveta piss,” he whispered into the night.

Dot laughed. “Okay you go and do that.”

“Don’t leave,” he warned.

“I won’t.”

As he stumbled carefully across the hall, Dot heart a faint cry of “He lives!” from the living room, followed shortly by an even fainter sound of Buster being sick again in the bathroom. The sound prompted her to open his window and dump the bucket out into the bushes beneath. The cool night air made her notice how stuffy the room was by contrast, and she left the window half open. Before he returned, she took off her coat, draping it over the arm of a chair, and shook out his blankets.

“Empty?” She asked when he shuffled back in the room and closed the door behind him.

“I tried to brush my teeth. Gagged on the toothbrush.”

“Oh dear.”

He sat back down on the bed and Dot stood in front of him, reaching out to undo the buttons of his shirt.

“This is just like the first time you undressed me for bed,” he mumbled.

“Mm,” she hummed. “I remember.”

“I scared you that night. Are you still afraid of me?”

“That was before I really knew you. I had no reason to be afraid then just like I don’t have any reason to be afraid now.” He shifted clumsily as she helped him slide out of his slacks. His clothes were all dirty with sweat and, judging by the smell, he’d spilled whiskey on himself at some point that evening. There was no point in airing them out. She rumpled the clothes into a ball and tossed them on the chair.

“Are you leaving?”

Dot shook her head. “I’m not leaving you tonight.”

“Thank you,” he said, then put his hands on her waist and turned her around so that her back was facing him where he sat on the edge of the bed. Dot tried to remain true to what she said, about not fearing that he would try anything with her, as she allowed him to unhook her dress and slide it off her shoulders. The whisper of her dress sliding against her slip as the dress fell into a puddle at her feet sounded unnaturally loud in her ears. For a moment he touched his forehead to the small of her back, his hands on her waist again, as if he was steadying himself. She wondered if he was dizzy. The he turned her back around and motioned for her to sit next to him.

When she sat on the bed, he reached up to tug on the end of the ribbon that held her braid. She thought about telling him that she normally slept with the braid, but he ran his fingers through her hair so sweetly that she didn’t have the heart to stop him. He’d done this before, but he was right, she had been afraid of him then. This time she leaned towards his touch.

She nearly did stop him when his fingers went to her thigh and he gently tugged a garter over her knee. He really didn’t mean anything by it though, she knew. And even if he did, he was too drunk to follow through on anything. He was just helping her get ready for bed, like she’d done for him. Nevermind that her pulse was racing.

Her stockings and garters joined her dress on the floor and, left only in her slip, they both laid own and pulled the blankets up. Buster pulled her tight against him, tucking her head underneath his chin.

“I waited so long to call for you, because I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he murmured.

“Why?”

“I abandoned you.”

Dot sighed. “Yes, you did. And we will have words about that later. But you shouldn’t have doubted me.”

Just as she was sure he was nearly asleep, she whispered once more. “Louise Brooks said I’m cute.”

“You’re damn cute, Dot. And don’t you forget it.”


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dot wears Buster's shirt

Dot woke to an unusual heaviness around her waist, and it took only a second to realize that it was Buster’s arm. She remembered how she’d once assumed he was an insomniac because of how twisted his sheets were every morning, and how she’d struggled not to laugh when she’d first seen how he slept, all splayed out like a child. So it was strange, she thought, when she realized that he’d slept so deeply that they hadn’t moved an inch all night. His arm still draped over her waist, her nose still nuzzled against his collarbone. His ankle crossed hers and her hands were pressed against his chest. 

She could hears birds singing outside and the room was bright with sunlight. She wondered what time it was.

The silence was broken when Buster suddenly snored, then coughed, in his sleep. Dot bit her lip, the absurdity of the moment hitting her all at once, and she did her best not to laugh but her entire body shook with the effort.

“What are you laughing at?” Buster mumbled, his voice so gravelly and low it was like she felt it rumbling in his chest more than heard it.

“You snore!” She giggled.

He paused. 

“I do not snore.”

“You just did, I heard it.”

“It was a joke, I was awake the whole time.”

Dot kept laughing. “That’s a shame, it was very cute,” She said, though truthfully he could have snored like a chainsaw all night long and she still wouldn’t be put off from the hope of sharing a bed with him again. She thought she’d never laid in a more comfortable bed, and that she’d never felt more warm and soft than when Buster pulled her tighter against him and pressed his lips to her forehead. She held her breath as he kissed a trail over her temple to her earlobe. The breath she held whooshed out of her lungs in a cocktail of fear and excitement when he pushed her shoulder back, rolling her onto her back as his hand wandered up her thigh and over her hip.

The fear won out in the end and, gripping his shoulders, she gasped, “Buster?”

“Mmhmm?” He hummed against the hollow of her throat.

“How do you feel?”

“Marvelous.”

She laughed again, more lightheaded this time. “Tell the truth.”

Sensing her hesitation, Buster straightened the hem of her slip and leaned his head back on the pillow. “My stomach feels alright, but my head is absolutely throbbing. Better than expected, though. I’d be dead if not for you.”

“You’re dehydrated.”

“Is that what I am?”

“That’s why you’ve got a headache,” she smiled at the somewhat dopey look on his face.

She slipped out from the blankets, trying not to notice the way his eyes raked over her, wearing so little. Undressing her in the dark of a night he’d likely only remember in hazy snapshots was one thing, but the hungry way his gaze lingered on her now made her feel like she’d never be forgotten. She shouldn’t have enjoyed that thought as much as she did. 

She wasn’t quite willing, yet, to surrender to the day. So, rather than pulling on the clothes she’d worn there, she crossed to his closet and chose one of the crisp white shirts that went with one of his suits and pulled it around her like a robe. When she looked back at him he was grinning.

“Here. I brought this for you. I’m afraid it isn’t cold anymore but it will work just as well,” she said, coming back to the bed and taking the jar of hangover cure from the nightstand.

“Oh, Christ,” Buster groaned as he sat up, squeezing his left eye shut against the apparent pain in his head. “I mean, thank God you’ve brought it but I haven’t missed the taste of your medicine.”

Reluctantly he screwed the lid off the jar and took a quick swig, grimacing as he swallowed.

“My mother used to say that she hoped it would work as a punishment as well as a cure. She took a certain amount of pleasure in watching my dad pull faces as he drank it.”

In response, Buster made a show of smoothing his expression to one of placid acceptance as he quickly drank half the jar. When he got the desired laugh out of Dot, he let his brows knit together as wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“I need a shower, I smell like old bar furniture. How you managed to sleep next to me like this, I’ll never know.”

Dot shrugged.

“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll cook you breakfast once I’m cleaned up.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t look so surprised, I still have one or two practical skills left. I’m pretty sure I can still crack an egg into a pan.”

Buster kicked off the blankets and got to his feet. He was as close to naked as she was, and she tried not to stare. Before leaving the room, he reached out to slide his finger under the strap of her slip.

“Don’t dress yet,” he said, then lifted his gaze from his fingers to her face. “I like how you look in this.”

She narrowed her eyes at him challengingly, all the while knowing she would do just as he asked. 

While Buster scrubbed off the residue of his ill-fated party, Dot slipped into the main room of the little building. She half expected to find the unconscious bodies of fellow revelers draped about, but she found the place empty. Vestiges of the party were left behind in the form of empty glasses and a broken lamp. She found a brush and pan in the kitchen and carefully swept up the ceramic shards. It didn’t take long to set the main room to rights and she ended up also making Buster’s bed before he reappeared, his hair damp and wearing only a towel around his waist.

“I do know how to make my bed, you know,” he laughed, heading to his closet. Half hidden by the closet door, he got dressed while Dot kept her eyes on the window. 

“It’s an old habit,” she said as he emerged, fresh and clean and buttoning his shirt. 

Buster started in on the kitchen while Dot freshened up in the bathroom. She splashed water on her face, swished out her mouth, and dragged her fingers through her hair, but when she looked in the mirror she hardly recognized herself. She looked like she’d woken from a tryst, standing there in a silk slip and a man’s shirt, her hair undone and her cheeks pink. Well, maybe she had, she thought to herself. Though as a girl growing up she’d never imagined a romantic rendezvous that began with her lover vomiting into a bucket.

Running underneath the novel excitement of waking up together, there was the knowledge on both sides that, only hours previously, he’d been so distressed that his friends had needed to call a stranger for help in the middle of the night. In the light of day, it didn’t seem like he was eager to talk about it. Dot decided she wouldn’t press him to tell her. Better to let him know that her care was unconditional, no questions asked. 

He’d said he liked how she looked, and as she looked at herself in the mirror she tried to see what he saw. She’d lived with her features and her body for so long that it was impossible to see herself as anything other than unremarkable; not especially ugly, but not especially pretty either. Wearing clothes that short did make her legs look longer, she supposed.

Quickly growing sick of staring at her reflection, she rejoined him in the kitchen. He was scrambling eggs with grated cheese and bits of onion. She watched him crack an egg expertly with one hand, raising a brow at her from the corner of his eye.

“Yes, I see. I’m sorry for doubting you,” she teased. “What can I do?”

“You can juice oranges if you’re itching for work.”

The zest and sweetness of orange joined with the comforting scent of onions and eggs as they prepared a meal, side by side, in the small kitchen. Toast with fresh butter was added to the menu and, when they brought the food to the little table under the window, it almost felt like the hundreds of past breakfasts they’d had together. 

“May I use your phone?” Dot asked, finishing a glass of orange juice after she’d finished eating.

“Of course. It’s in the hallway.”

Dot felt a trickle of anxiety as she stood in Buster’s home, wearing his shirt and precious little else, and called the downstairs number of the Villa.

It was Madge who answered.

“This is Dot,” she said.

“Hello Dot, how is your friend?”

“Seems much better this morning. I’m glad I came, but it appears that I’ll be able to be back this afternoon.”

“Alright. Mrs. Keaton wasn’t particularly pleased about you leaving without any notice, but when I explained she seemed to understand. She’ll be glad to know that you won’t miss even a full day.”

“Of course, I’ll make my own apologies when I get back. Thank you, Madge.”

Dread crept over her as Dot hung up. If Natalie was displeased at Dot’s sudden departure, there was no telling what would happen if she knew where Dot had been. The dread was burned away by the warmth of Buster’s embrace, however, when he stepped up behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

“Do you have to go back so soon?” He asked.

“There’s so much dusting to be done,” she said, turning to face him. “All those empty rooms.”

He looked sad for a moment before a corner of his lip quirked up and he leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry you had to see me like that. Again. But thank you for coming and taking care of me.”

Dot wasn’t sure how to respond. So much had been demonstrated that saying it out loud felt cheap somehow. Without telling him, he knew well enough now that she would always come when he called for her, and without a word on the subject they’d dropped the pretext of being merely friends. Dot would still stubbornly insist that mistress wasn’t quite the right word, but it had to be obvious to him now that she loved him, and that was damning enough.

She left knowing that it may be months again before she saw him. Likely, he would call her back in the same state he had last night. She couldn’t be bitter about that, some part of her had always assumed that if she ever did manage to win a man, it would be her caregiving that did it rather than any mystical feminine charm.

There was a sense of finality in the Villa when Dot returned that afternoon. She threw herself into her work so earnestly that she was able to make up for lost time, and she apologized profusely to Natalie, but she felt then that she understood Buster perfectly when he’d said he didn’t feel like he fit in that house anymore. Dot couldn’t quite settle back into her routine, she felt like a spy, an untrained, foolish spy who would ruin everything in a moment.

The next morning, Dot was awakened by a knock to her door. Thinking to herself that she’d very much appreciate a break from being awakened this way, she answered it.

“May I come in for a moment?” Madge asked.

“Um. Of course.” Dot stood aside.

“I thought it best I tell you first,” Madge began. “You must remember that no one with any sense can blame you. It’s every young person’s right to do at least one foolish thing before they settle into adulthood.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gossip travels fast in this city. A lot of the time it’s all lies, of course, but...” Madge explained as she showed Dot the gossip paper she’d been clutching in her hand.

Dot took the paper from Madge’s hand, instantly finding a photo of Buster with his identifying hat. A short but damning inscription was just beneath it.

“Sad-faced comedian Buster Keaton said to have suffered ill-effects at a late night party. He called upon the aid of an unknown woman, rumored to be a maid in his household, who nursed him in undisclosed ways in his bungalow on the MGM lot. Unnamed sources assure that Keaton seems to be feeling better.”

The short article went on to talk about his upcoming release, casually, as if they hadn’t just sent the world crashing around Dot’s ears.

Dot sniffed, and Madge patted her back.

“Did you know?” Dot asked.

Madge shrugged. “A very vague suspicion at best. I imagine his wife had a better idea of it than us. She will read this today.”

“What will I do?” Dot asked, dashing tears from her cheeks.

“You’ll carry on. Rent a room on your severance pay, live lean until you find another job. It shouldn’t be hard, you’re a fine worker. One day you’ll be old and you’ll be glad you have a story to tell about something reckless and interesting you did in your youth.”

Before Dot had a moment to adjust to this plan, The governess called from the servant’s kitchen that Natalie was up and calling for Dot. Madge dabbed at Dot’s eyes with the corner of her apron and told her to hurry. 

Dot’s hands were shaking as she brought up breakfast for what she expected to be the last time. Thankfully, Natalie was not in a friendly mood. Dot didn’t think she’d be able to force small talk knowing what Natalie would soon learn.

It didn’t take long. Dot and Madge were silently working on straightening the children’s toys when Natalie appeared in the doorway.

“Dot, a word with you in the living room please,” she said simply, before walking away.

Instantly, there were tears in Dot’s eyes and she turned to madge. 

“I can’t do it. I can’t face her.”

“You can and you will. It’s only natural that she’ll be angry, but she knows who she married. Anyone with a clear head can see where the blame lies, and it’s not on your head. You’ll be fine.” Madge hugged her in what Dot recognized as an attempt at warmth, but she was wrong about Buster, and the blame sat heavy like a stone in the pit of Dot’s stomach. 

Dot walked to the living room as if to the gallows, her feet heavy and dumb with shame. Natalie was standing with one hand on the piano, looking beautiful and composed. 

“You have until the end of the day to be out of my house,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” Dot said through tears.

“Please don’t make a scene. This check covers your wages, plus what you would have made if you’d continued to work until your next payment.”

Dot’s face burned. She wished that she could be more elegant, more cool. Like Natalie, who stood in her beautiful clothes with her head held high and no trace of emotion on her face as she handed over the check. Dot had never felt more ridiculous, and she couldn’t stop crying.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” Dot said, choking on a sob and not meeting Natalie’s eyes.

“Goodbye, Dot.”


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Natalie still won't fight.

Buster sighed angrily, clenching his teeth and attempting to contain his exasperation. If he had only seen that gossip paper before filming had started that morning, he could have abandoned work and rushed to the villa to at least attempt to shield Dot from Natalie’s ire. But he had only caught wind of the article hours into the workday, and he couldn’t get away. Just another way the contract with MGM was coming back to haunt him. He tried to call the house in between scenes, but it would ring and ring, Natalie wouldn’t answer, and he wouldn’t put it past her to have told everyone else in the house to ignore the phone too. He kept trying anyway.

Finally, finally, Buster was released to eat lunch, and he peeled out of the studio with no intention of returning that day, come what may. The drive to the villa had never been longer. He was speeding, his foot leaden with anxiety and anger, but no matter how fast he drove, he seemed to just inch along the road.

When he finally flew down the long drive of the palace he’d build for Nat, he screeched the car to a stop just before crashing into the steps and jumped out, taking those steps two at a time.

She must have heard the car coming because Nat was standing at the top of the stairs when he came in. She opened her mouth to speak but he bounded across the room in the direction of the servant’s quarters rather than wait and see what she would say.

When he passed through the kitchen, he tried not to look at the maid and the cook who were standing near the oven. They’d been talking, but fell quiet as he passed them.

Dot’s bedroom door was slightly ajar and before he even pushed it open he had a sinking feeling in his stomach. The door swung open wide to reveal a stark and empty room. Gone was the tree, gone was the hairbrush and the perfume bottle and the various little things that had once decorated the top of the dresser. The only sign that Dot had ever even lived there was the neatly folded uniform that was laid on the bed.

Buster felt ill, imagining Dot having to pack up and leave all on her own, with no one to defend her. He should have been there. Swallowing thickly, he returned to the kitchen.

“Do you know where she went?” he asked.

Madge shook her head. “I didn’t ask. Can’t say she was in the mood to talk.”

He nodded, biting back a flippant retort that the woman didn’t really deserve and went back to the stairs to face his wife.

She was just where he had left her, standing at the top of the stairs, one hand laid gently on the railing. Waiting for him. She said nothing, she just watched him as he climbed the stairs, until he was close enough to touch.

“Do you know where she went?” He asked again.

“Why should I?”

“Natalie, her family depends on her. You should have talked to me before sacking her.”

Natalie gave a cold, humorless laugh. “Oh? You think you could have convinced me to keep her under my roof?”

Buster scoffed, tongue-tied.

“You really have no idea at all where she’s gone?” He asked once he’d found his voice again.

“So that you can go looking for her? Even if I did know where she went, why would I tell you?’ Why would I help you reunite with your mistress?” Natale’s voice had started out measured and calm, but by the end there was a hint of chaos underneath that cool exterior.

Buster took Natalie’s hand, but when she snatched it away he placed his hand gently between her shoulder blades and she didn’t resist when he steered her towards her bedroom. He closed the door behind him.

“Where are the boys?”

“In the playhouse, is my guess. Are you ashamed for them to hear what you’ve done?”

“Children don’t need to listen to their mother and father fighting.”

Natalie strode into the pink, girlish room. She picked up a silver handled brush and began to brush her hair mindlessly. Her back was to him, but she watched him from the mirror. Her tense watchfulness belied her unmoved demeanor.

“What fight?” She asked cooly. “There’s nothing to fight about. You got careless, the secret got out, and now she’s gone. There’s nothing more to be said.”

“So you don’t mind me seeing her, just that people found out about it.” Buster took the brush from her hand. It was always her coldness, her composure, that drove him mad. He’d come to learn, over the course of years, that Natalies “we won’t speak of this” really meant “we won’t speak at all.”

“Please fight me. Just this once.” Buster said, turning her shoulders away from the mirror.

“How long has this been going on?” She asked with a sigh.

Buster shrugged, shaking his head. It was hard to say exactly when it started. 

“Since you took her to that party?”

Buster inhaled. For all his wanting to fight, he kept finding himself tongue tied. Memories flashed through his mind in a rapid fire, the greenhouse, Dot barefoot in his room the morning Alfred was sick, the high window curtains and her ripped stockings, a million tiny moments of catching her eye across a room and how she would smile and duck her head.

“Earlier than that, then.” Natalie said in response to his silence. “You chose her in the first place, remember? Were you planning to seduce her from the first day?”

“Seduce? Who said anything about seducing--”

Natalie cut him off with a laugh, one that almost sounded genuinely mirthful. “Buster, please. I know Dot. Not as well as you do, apparently, but well enough to know she’s hardly a temptress. So it must have been you.”

Buster’s vision softened, his world going quiet for a moment. Was that true? Had he seduced Dot?

“I liked her from the very first time I saw her. You’re right about that. But it’s not as if a drew up plans, like I wrote up a step by step guide on how to get a maid out of her uniform. Is that really what you think of me, Nat? That I could be so calculated? I’m a comedian, for hell’s sake. The only thing I’m really good at is making an ass of myself and even that I do on the fly.”

“So if no one did any seducing, then, ” Natalie’s eyes were shining but her chin raised defiantly. “Are you in love? Do you love her?”

Buster tilted his head to the side, touching his finger under her chin. “Why do you do this? You’re always trying to get me to say things just to hurt you.”

“Do you love her?” She repeated.

“I think it’s because you want to feel justified in leaving me. You want me to be this man you’ve made up in your head who heartlessly runs around seducing women left and right. Then you’d clear your conscience about how you’ve pushed me out of my own house almost from the beginning.”

“You aren’t answering the question,” she said, raising a perfectly penciled eyebrow.

“I’ll answer yours if you answer mine.”

Nat’s lips pressed into a line. Her face was pale and her hands were trembling, though she hid it by clenching them into fists at her side. Bitterly, Buster thought to himself that she’d give herself a heart attack trying to hold back her emotions before she’d ever let her guard down around him. Even then, after everything, he still believed that what they had could be salvaged if she would just let him know her.

“Are you really jealous?” He asked, leaning close to her. “Tell me, Nat. Do you want me that badly? Do you miss me in your bed so much that it burns you up inside to think of me in anyone else’s?” He paused but she said nothing. 

“Or are you just embarrassed? Are you afraid of how it makes you look, like you can’t even control a childish clown of a husband like me?”

Her trembling increased, but her expression didn’t change. Her eyes were stubborn, unflinching.

“I’m embarrassed.”

Buster let the admission hang in the air, studying his wife’s face, remembering how pretty her smile had been on their wedding day.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I do love her.”

He turned to leave, to begin looking for Dot.

“If you take one step out of this house in search of that servant, you had better not come back.”

“How will I ever recover from the shock of suddenly being unwelcome in my own home?” He slammed the door to that frothy pink den of solitude she’d made for herself on his way out of the room.

He started to return to the servants quarters but on the way to the kitchen he passed Madge in the living room and stopped.

“Have you really got no idea at all where she may have gone?” He asked.

Madge stopped plumping throw pillows and straightened to her full height. She was really a rather imposing woman, tall and lean with a face that betrayed no emotion, usually. Just then, however, he thought he could detect a hint of anxiety in the set of her mouth.

“I don’t believe even she had a clear idea of where she was headed. I instructed her to stay in a hotel on what money she has until she can find other work, but she may find a boarding house cheaper. I did hear her mention Michigan in passing. If you are eager to find her I would suggest beginning with trains departing east, first. Just to be safe.”

Buster slapped the doorframe and spun around, thanking her over his shoulder as he bolted for the door.

For the next two days, Buster was in a panic. She hadn’t been on any trains headed to Michigan, that he could determine. But nor did she seem to be staying in any of the hotels in the area. He called them all. There were any number of boarding houses around, which was to say nothing of the impossible to know number of households or apartments with rooms for rent. After calling the last hotel he could think of, to no avail, he was beginning to despair, not knowing where to look next. He began to ask around, mentioning to everyone who had met her, even if they knew her only as the fictional Lillian from the house party, that he was looking for her. They said they would keep an eye out for her and let him know if they saw her, but as the days passed a feeling of hopelessness settled in his chest. 

He didn’t go back home. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Natalie had been serious about not wanting to see him again if he went after Dot. Now, he laid alone in the cold bed in the bungalow, the one he had shared with her for one hazy night, and he wondered if he had traded away everything to look for a woman he would never find.  
\---

Dot had a cold. She’d hardly gotten sick at all since moving to California, but she had the same headache off and on ever since leaving the Villa and she felt feverish, all clammy and achey from head to toe. She blamed it on the shock of everything happening so quickly, but there was no time for excuses. She wouldn’t be able to make rent on the room she’d found if she didn’t find new work right away. In the mornings she burrowed her face into the scratchy blankets and squeezed her eyes shut against the throbbing in her head. She needed to get up, put on her dress and pin up her hair, put lipstick on, smile at the woman downstairs, and jaunt on down the street in search of a position, but all she wanted to do was sleep and sleep and sleep.

In that strange bed, feeling ill and far from herself, it was tempting to believe that her two years with the Keatons had been one long fever dream. In the early hours of the morning she could almost convince herself that she needed to get up soon, not to look for work, but to get on the bus to go to the factory where she had worked before. 

She pulled herself out of bed, keeping her eyes on her feet to prevent her head from swimming if she sat up too quickly. Slowly, with the halting movements of one who had suffered an injury and wasn’t brave enough to test their full weight on a broken bone, she dressed herself. She had lied to the landlady when she moved in, saying she already had a job as a shopgirl, and would have no trouble paying rent. The lie gnawed at her worse than her headache, and she vowed, just as she did every morning, to make good on it. 

She was staying in the spare room of a recently single woman’s small apartment. Miss Peterson was living lean on alimony and a prayer, and in Dot’s more lucid moments, she felt blessed to have found a nice woman to live with.

“Have a lovely day, Dot!” Miss Peterson said. She was in the kitchen, holding her baby on her hip and attempting to wash clothes in the kitchen sink with her one free hand.

“I will, Miss Peterson. I’ll bring home some meat for supper.” Dot said it on impulse, cringing inwardly as she thought of her already dwindling cash. 

“Bless you, sweetheart.” Miss Peterson said, smiling a little sadly and wiping a curly strand of blonde hair from her forehead with her wrist.

Filled anew with almost enough purpose to counterbalance her poor health and recent humiliation, Dot went out. Her first order of business had been to attempt to find work close enough to the apartment to walk, but none of the small shops on that street were hiring. Every day she’d gone further afield, until she’d had to resort to taking the bus. A factory job was her last resort. She told herself that she would give herself a full two weeks to look for anything else before going to a factory. She had one day left.

She got off the bus at a random stop, far enough into the city that she would have the opportunity to be turned away from a good selection of shops and places of business. On the sidewalk, she stood next to the wall and tidied her lipstick and hair in her compact mirror. Her cold was actually beginning to improve, and that morning she didn’t have to convince herself that the low grade fever looked like a touch of makeup on her cheeks, not impending death. She looked alright.

She tilted her chin up and smiled gently, as if remembering a joke, and walked lightly down the street, pretending to be shopping, but really looking for any place that may be hiring.

At last, her prayers were answered and as she bit into a sandwich that she’d payed for in quarters, a girl in the hat shop across the way put a “shopgirl wanted” sign in the window.

Dot tipped her sandwich into a trashcan and hurried over.

“I’m here about the shopgirl position?” She said when she entered the shop and the fashionable woman asked her if she needed help finding something.

“That was quick!” The woman laughed.

Dot shrugged, smiling and offering her hand. “Dorothy Adams.”

That night, Dot stood in the hallway while Miss Peterson fed little Timmy in the kitchen and she called the villa. She breathed a sigh of relief when it was Madge who answered.

“Madge, it’s Dot. I was wondering if any letters had arrived for me?”

“No letters here,” the familiar voice said.

“I’ve found a place and I got a job today so I’ll be able to stay. Can I leave you my address so if my mother writes me you can send it on?”

“I’m relieved to hear it. And yes, of course. But Dot, you should know. Buster is looking for you.”

Dot pinched the phone cord, chewing her lip nervously for a moment before answering. “He is?”

“I don’t have to tell him anything. But, do you want to be found?”

“What should I do, Madge?” Dot asked quietly.

Madge laughed. “Oh honey, if I knew anything about how to handle men I wouldn’t be where I am right now, a genuine old maid. You should do exactly what you want to do, if you ask me. And hang everyone else.”

Dot took a slow breath. “If he asks you, you may tell him where I am. But don’t go doing anything that will get you in trouble for aiding the enemy.”

Madge laughed again, quieter this time. “Alright. Very glad to hear you are well. Others unnamed will be glad to hear it as well. Take care of yourself, and good luck.”


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dot makes a request.

Miss Peterson met Dot at the door two days later. Dot’s shoulders ached from the tense way she’d been standing all day, trying her best to get into the swing of working in a hat shop but failing rather spectacularly. She was exhausted, her feet hurt, and she was still a bit sick, but the look on Miss Peterson’s face woke Dot up from her aching lethargy.

“Dot there’s a man here for you!” The older woman whispered. “Are you someone famous? I’m sorry for not recognizing you.”

“Oh. No. No I’m not--” Dot began but she was already gravitating toward the hallway. Of course she knew who it was, and knowing of his nearness had jolted her awareness such that she thought she might have sensed him around the corner even if Miss Peterson hadn’t been there to warn her. 

“He’s sitting outside your room. He’s been here two hours already, I didn’t know what to do. He probably thinks I’m rude, I’ve just been ignoring him. Should Timmy and I go out for a while?”

Dot put the bag of veggies she’d brought home into Miss Peterson’s hands and walked blindly to her room. Buster had been sitting on the chair near the phone, but he stood up when he saw her. It hadn’t been all that long since the last time she’d seen him, a few weeks, she’d gone much longer stretches of time without seeing him before, but this time he looked so changed that it felt like years had passed. Perhaps it was the dim lighting of the poor apartment’s dark hallway, but he looked remarkably ordinary, in his casual clothes and pulling his hands from his pockets. She realized she’d frozen in place when he stepped towards her. He looked like he was going to say something, but when he got closer and took her hands on both of his, he seemed to think better of what he was going to say.

“Dot, are you sick?” he asked instead.

“Not very. Not anymore.”

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Madge told me. I’d begun to think you’d left for good.” He wrapped her in a tight hug.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled against his shoulder.

“Why didn’t you come back to me? I’d have taken care of you, you didn’t need to be thrown out on the street like that. I looked for you and I kept expecting you to show up at the house but you didn’t come.”

Dot looked over her shoulder. Miss Peterson wasn’t listening, she could hear her back in the kitchen again with Timmy, but regardless, Dot Pulled away from Buster’s arms and motioned for her door.

“Come sit down.”

In the little bedroom, Dot hurried around, taking her laundry off the only chair and tidying up as quickly as she could before sitting on the edge of her bed. Buster ignored the chair she’d cleared for him and sat next to her. 

“I’m sorry for worrying you. I thought...well I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me after the trouble I got you into.” 

Buster furrowed his brow, looking confused and maybe a little bit angry. Bewildered, perhaps. It was hard to say. “Dot, you only came for me that night because I called and called and begged for you to. Do you think I forgot that? I thought, maybe she’s mad at me and I should stop looking for her if she doesn’t want me. I kept trying though. I’m sorry I keep doing that. If you want, I’ll leave you alone now. I know you liked working at the house, and it’s my fault you’re not still there, happy and safe. I should have left you alone from the beginning. But I just couldn’t let you get away without at least seeing you once more to say goodbye.”

He had his hands in his lap and was picking at his cuticles, looking down at his fingers. He sounded like he was repeating a speech he’d been putting together for some time, the way he rattled it off like that. Suddenly, Dot felt perfectly awful for not calling him at least. She’d convinced herself that he wouldn’t want to see her again, without once considering that perhaps he would feel abandoned. She’d been too blinded by her own shattered pride to remember that, no matter what anyone else thought, she wasn’t just some stupid maid for the boss to play with. She’d always been more concerned with being his friend, someone he could rely on, and he had come to rely on her. When he needed someone, he came to her. 

She threw her arms around him and he caught her, half in his lap, as she collapsed onto his shoulders. “Oh Buster you’re right, I should have just come right back to you. I was so foolish and embarrassed, I really believed everything they thought about me. I just couldn’t face anyone.”

“You shouldn’t have had to face anyone alone. I should have been there with you,” he said, clutching her and pulling her more fully onto his lap. Dot felt the tension in her shoulders begin to finally relax as she inhaled the familiar, comforting scent of his cologne. His nose pressed against the crook of her neck and for a while he said nothing, he just ran his thumb over the small of her back and rocked her gently back and forth.

“Madge said you’d found work,” he murmured a while later, still holding her close.

Dot nodded. “Selling hats. Or trying to. I’m not very good at it yet.”

She felt him smile against her shoulder before he looked up.

“You’re not my maid anymore.”

She shook her head.

“And I won’t have you cleaning up any more of my messes. Everything that’s happened, or will happen, with my wife...I made that mess all by myself. And I’ll clean it up. You don’t worry about a thing.” He kissed Dot’s temple. “From now on let me take care of everything. Anything you need, I’m your man.”

A thrill of anxiety rushed down her spine at the words, but she greeted the fear of the unknown with more careless courage than she’d have thought herself capable only minutes ago. 

“Let me bring you back. Stay with me,” he said, gripping her waist tightly.

“You may be my man, but I won’t have you paying my bills, Buster, so get that thought out of your head. I worked hard to find this job, and I won’t let their long hours of training me go to waste. And besides Miss Peterson needs me. I will stay here. You may visit.”

“Your sense of loyalty is an odd thing, Dot,” he said. “Alright then, I don’t want you to worry about a thing, except millinery and rent. Those I will allow you to worry about, since you insist.”

“In fact you’d better call ahead first in time for me to clear the dirty laundry off my one and only chair when you do visit.”

He shook his head lazily. “No, I don’t think I will. I find it charming that my former maid keeps such a messy bedroom. Besides, I prefer to sit here.”

Miss Peterson never did call on Dot to say that supper was ready. The small room grew darker as the minutes went by, with Dot settled into Buster’s lap on her bed as if it were the most normal thing in the world. They were content, for the time being, to sit and chat about stupid, inconsequential things as if everything had been smoothed over already and nothing had been left unsettled.

The illusion lasted until it grew dark enough that Dot had to stand up and turn on a lamp. Buster stood up, smoothing his clothes and running his hands over his hair. There was no need to, his hair hadn’t gotten mussed just from sitting with her, but Dot understood the impulse. As the room had gotten darker, the casual way he traced his fingertips over her arm had begun to feel less and less casual, and the occasional tighter squeeze of his arm around her had given way to stopping, sometimes mid sentence, to kiss her jaw or the corner of her lips. She’d leaned into him, pretending not to notice the darkness or the slower way he was breathing, but inwardly she found it increasingly difficult to notice anything else.

The lamplight set the room in a golden glow that, in the nights previous, had set Dot on edge. The unfamiliarity of the room and the creeping way that night fell on that side of the house had given her a vague and deep sense of unease and fear. Not being alone changed the tone of it altogether, and when she turned to find him standing she was disappointed for the missed opportunity to crawl right back into his lap.

“I suppose I’d better scram before the landlady tosses me out on my ear,” he said, reaching for his hat off the bedpost.

“Oh. Right,” She said dumbly, a mild panic settling over her at the thought of him leaving.

“She seemed unnerved. Will you be in a bad spot for having me in here? Maybe I should say goodbye before I go? Explain a bit? Not everything, I just mean smooth it over. I don’t know what kind of woman she is--”

“She’s not my mother,” Dot said. “The kind of woman she is, is the ‘not my mother’ kind.”

Buster chuckled, touching the backs of his fingers to her cheek so that she knew he could tell she was blushing even in the half-light. She lifted her hand to her own cheek, wrapping her fingers around his. 

“I really had better be going, Dot.” His voice was low, like a warning.

“After all this time, are you really going to make me say it? I never have before, and I don’t know how to ask,” she blurted, feeling suddenly rather weak-kneed. Madge’s advice hovered in her head in a distant but insistent kind of way; that she should do exactly what she wanted to do, and hang everyone else. It’s something she’d never considered before, following her own whims rather than thinking of what others needed or expected from her. At any other time in her life, she would have laughed off that advice, thinking it was probably good advice for some people, but not for her. Never for her.

But now, it was dark. And quiet. And Buster was there. He wasn’t her boss and she wasn’t his maid. And she didn’t want to miss him anymore. 

“Yes, I will make you say it,” he said, touching his forehead to hers, “because this is important. I need you to tell me exactly what it is you want.”

Dot shut her eyes, willing herself to speak. “That night at the bungalow, I slept so well. With you, I mean. I never slept so well. And I’ve been a bit sick, so don’t you think you should...help me sleep again?”

When she opened her eyes again he was smiling. “You want me to tuck you in?”

“Oh quit teasing me, you wicked man!” 

“Shhh.” He chuckled, putting a finger over her lips and leaning close to her ear to whisper, “That’s some exclamation for Miss Not-Your-Mother to hear from the next room at nine in the evening.” His finger trailed over her bottom lip and down the front of her neck until he hooked it in the neck of her dress, pulling the neckline down an inch to expose her collarbone, which he kissed.

“Ask me.”

“Please,”

“Mmhmm?” He was kissing her neck then, pulling her tight against him and laughing quietly. She was glad he found it all so funny, but Dot thought she might combust, torn between virgin shyness and a newfound recklessness she felt oddly entitled to and emboldened by.

“Undress me like you did before,” she managed.

“And then…”

She smiled, his hands were already pulling up the hem of her dress. “And then take me to bed.”

“And then…”

“And then…” She squirmed and joined his laughter. “Well, Buster, then you’re just going to have to show me what else there is to ask for.”

“Alright, sweet Dot. Okay.” He said, pausing to kiss her on the mouth. “That’s good enough. I’ll take it.”


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Buster makes soup

The next morning, he was holding her the same way he had that morning when they’d woken up together in the bungalow. That felt like a lifetime ago now, Dot had been a different person then. She wriggled slightly, rubbing her thighs together to test the soreness from the night before, and grinned to herself. The pain of being deflowered had really been overstated. She felt fine, and she was beginning to ruminate on the origins of the term “deflower” when her train of thought was derailed.

“How do you feel?” His whisper was thick with sleep.

“I feel wonderful. Never better.”

The sleepy grin that spread over his lips made her blood surge with adrenaline. He looked beautiful in the morning.

“Good,” he said, that lazy smile subtly morphing into a self-satisfied smirk.

“Again?” she asked, wiggling suggestively against him.

“Again?” he laughed, kissing her forehead and then her neck as he rolled her onto her back. Dot was stifling her own breathless laughter when her alarm clock began to ring. She froze, her hands on his chest.

“Oh. I have to get up,” she said, sliding out from the cage of his arms on either side of her to reach across the bed and silence the alarm. “I can’t be late to work.”

Buster rolled back onto his back, smoothing his messy hair casually with his fingers.

“I wasn’t about to refuse such a charming request, but it also could be noted that your landlady is awake in the kitchen just down the hall.”

“How long have you been awake?”

He shrugged. “Maybe half an hour. I don’t know.”

Dot sat up, clutching the sheets to her chest which movement caused the sheets to be pulled off of Buster’s.

“You should have woken me.”

“You looked so comfortable.”

Dot laughed, wishing she could come up with some witty response, something a worldly, glamorous woman would say. But then Buster was sitting up on the edge of the bed with blankets tangled around his hips, lazily beginning to pull on his clothes, and it hit her all at once.

There had always been times, little moments ever since she started working at the villa, when everything would crystalize. She would look around and wonder how she had ever landed that job in that beautiful home, or Buster would nod at her from across the room and she’d be knocked off balance by the unlikeliness of it all. Watching Buster waking up naked in her bed was one of those moments. Everything seemed to converge on those few seconds, and Dot held her breath.

“Is something the matter?” he asked, starting on the buttons of his shirt from the day before.

Dot shook her head softly. “No.”

He smiled again, pulling her closer by her wrist and kissing her forehead. “Don’t be so disappointed. Stay at my place tonight and I’ll make it up to you.”

 

Dot blushed, pulling the sheet around her as she stood up and began rummaging through her dresser. Buster watched her get dressed, and she did her best not to notice. When he got up to help her with the hooks on her dress, his fingertips grazed against her skin and she remembered all the mornings when she’d done up his ties. Had it felt like this to him?

When she had her hair pinned and her shoes tied and there was no other way to procrastinate the inevitable, she stood at the door of her bedroom and took a deep breath. 

“Miss Peterson is going to pretend not to be shocked when she sees you this morning,” Dot said.

“Shall I shinny down the drainpipe instead?”

Dot chewed on her fingernail, glancing at the window. “Maybe…”

“She already knows I stayed the night,” he admitted as if dropping a bomb in her lap.

“What?” Dot’s eyes went wide while Buster chuckled.

“Yeah, I got up for a glass of water around 4am and she was up with the baby.”

“Oh Christ.” 

“She offered me coffee.”

“Oh no.”

“I don’t think she cares.”

“Oh Buster.”

With a heavy sigh, she bit the bullet and opened the door, walking down to the kitchen. Miss Peterson was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to coax the baby to eat a bowl of mashed banana.

“Good morning,” the woman said without looking up.

“Good morning, Miss Peterson.”

“There’s muffins in the oven if you have time to wait,” Miss Peterson said, finally looking up and smiling at both of them as if there was nothing odd happening.

“I need to leave, actually,” Buster said. “Thank you, though.”

Lowering his voice, he turned to Dot. “We’ll talk later?”

Dot nodded with a forced smile, inclining her head toward him when he squeezed her hand and kissed the corner of her mouth before saying goodbye to Miss Peterson and letting himself out.

Dot collapsed into a kitchen table with a quiet thud. There was silence for a moment, but then Miss Peterson started laughing. Dot looked up.

“So.. How…?”

“Oh, it’s a long story,” Dot explained feebly.

“It was a bit of a shock to my system when, sitting up with a gassy baby in the dark of the morning, Buster Keaton waltzed into my kitchen wearing a floral dressing gown.”

Dot dissolved, dropping her head onto the table and joining in with Miss Peterson’s laughter.

“Waltzed?” she asked after a moment.

“Bounced, perhaps.”

Dot covered her head with her arms.

“Are you upset?” Dot asked when the laughter had died down.

Miss Peterson shrugged. “It’s really none of my business, and I’d like to keep it that way. If he’s here more nights than not I may charge him rent though.”

“Are you joking?” 

“I’m not sure yet. Ask again later,” Miss Peterson laughed and stood up to fetch a rag to wipe down the table in front of little Timmy, which had become smeared with his banana covered hands. Dot got up as well to wash the bowl and spoon for her. Humor aside, Dot was still worried. An affair with Buster felt inherently incendiary, and she doubted that her landlady was as comfortable as she was pretending to be. Dot silently promised herself that she’d try her best to keep Buster and the rest of her life separate. No matter how comfortable it felt to be with him, she couldn’t fool herself into believing that all would be smooth sailing from then on out. 

She put those dark thoughts out of her head and went in to work, throwing herself back into the daily schedule she was still trying to adjust to.

+++  
Buster stood at the stove stirring a pot of soup. Dot sat at the table behind him, watching him, remembering how she’d doubted his ability to cook at first. He kept a card on the counter, making notes on it as he went. He was writing down the recipe for her, it was one he’d made up himself and was proud of.

Splitting her time between work, and home, and being with Buster at his bungalow, had left Dot’s feet aching. In those days, Buster was always on the move. He still worked more often than not, but when he wasn’t at work it looked to Dot like he was trying to crawl out of his skin. She’d asked him a couple times if he was alright, if he needed help, but he’d brush her off, smile, say everything was under control, and tell her not to worry about anything.

Naturally, she did anyway. 

“Did you want to go to the beach today?” he asked over his shoulder.

Dot paused, trying to gauge how important it was to him that she say yes. 

“I’m a bit worn out, actually. Can we stay in?”

“Are you getting sick?” He turned around then, his eyes scanning her face for any trace of fever. Dot just smiled and shook her head.

“Not sick. Just tired. You’ve taken me out just about every day this week.”

“You don’t like when I take you out?” he said with a haughty quirk of his brow as he turned back to his work.

“Of course I do. But I like when you keep me in too.”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, then shook his head and tsked playfully, muttering something cheeky under his breath that she didn’t quite catch. She let the unheard comment stand, smiling and picking at a loose stitch in the hem of her sleeve as he finished cooking.

When he did sit down, with a big bowl of soup placed in front of both of them, he fidgeted endlessly in his chair. Dot wondered if it would have been best to agree to the trip to the beach. He seemed more comfortable when he was out, busy, doing something. He seemed happiest when he was buying her things, which Dot was not overly fond of. Her discomfort at accepting gifts hadn’t changed, but refusing them put him out so much that she’d been trying to overcome her reticence, knowing that it was just his most natural way of showing affection. He “wasn’t one for much talking” as he would say, but a new dress or a bouquet of tulips said what he couldn’t, so she made a conscious effort to quit attempting to tabulate the cost of everything he gave her.

Still, accepting his shyness about sharing his feelings in words could only go so far in assuaging her worry that he was suffering silently. Ever since that first night when he’d found her, he’d never spoken of Natalie to her again. She had no idea if he’d spoken to her, if he’d gone home, or what was happening in that sphere. The size of those unanswered questions grew larger when things were quiet. He felt it too, it showed in the fact that he fought against every quiet moment, filling them all with little trips around town (or little trips to the bedroom) and stories and pranks and generally much posturing that everything was fine and there was no cause for concern.

Even despite his efforts, the quiet moments did come. He stared into his bowl of soup for a moment, stirring his spoon around the rim of the bowl slowly. Dot wondered if he was thinking about his kids, or his wife. She chewed on her lip, waiting for him to say something. But when he did, he was smiling, and he launched into a story about something that had happened at a party three years ago. Dot was left wondering if she ever really had any idea what he was thinking about.

So she was kept waiting, wondering if he’d ever confide his feelings in her. She waited. And waited. Until she got another phone call came in the middle of the night. Always the middle of the night.

“Dot?” His voice on the phone sounded hoarse and strange. Her heart climbed into her throat right away, she could tell he was drunk.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m at home. I’m sorry.”

Dot pulled anxiously on a strand of hair that had been left out of her braid. Of course she’d been waiting, hoping that he’d soon deem her worthy to see that he was struggling, but now that the time had come she found herself more nervous than she thought she’d be.

“I’ll come now. Unlock your door for me.”

 

She arrived at the bungalow and, jogging up the steps, she couldn't help but remember the last time she had been called to this place in the middle of the night.

This time, there was no light spilling from the windows. There was no Louise Brooks smiling and calling her cute. There would be no cry of “he lives” when buster stumbled from his bedroom. The house was silent, and darker than she’d ever seen it. A cold night wind seeped through her coat and she shivered, but he had been able to unlock the door as she had instructed. She let herself in.

The little house, which had quickly become so familiar and comfortable to her, was transformed at this desolate hour. Not a single light was on in the house, and there was no indication of where he was. Dot had a terrible premonition of him lying on the floor somewhere, half dead.

“Buster?” she called.

“Kitchen.”

She followed his voice, flipping on the light as she came into the kitchen. He winced, sitting at the table, his hands in his lap oddly. A bottle of whiskey was on the table but there was no glass.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” she asked as lightly as she could.

“I think I wanted someone to complain to. I shoulda let you sleep,” he said.

“Were you at a party?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t fall asleep. I didn’t want to tell you anything about it, I wanted to handle it on my own.”

”Darling, I don’t know what you’re saying,” Dot said as gently as she could, pouring him a glass of water and beginning to put together a sandwich for him. He was drunk, yes, but not as drunk as she’d seen him before, not as drunk as she’d feared. She hadn’t known him to drink alone before though.

“I know,” he said. “Let me try again. Um…”

Dot waited as he gathered his thoughts. In the silence it was like she could hear the gears in his head turning, trying to sort out why he had called her there and what he needed to say. She put a peanut butter sandwich down in front of him and he stared at it as she sat down.

“This may be messy,” he pronounced, as if he had said something important. Dot bit her lip, smiling weakly, trying to understand.

“I’m sorry, love. I still don’t know what you mean.”

“I spoke to Nat today.”

He shouldn’t have called her. He shouldn’t have woken her. Buster’s resolve to keep his struggles with Natalie apart from Dot had been strong earlier in the day but as the day wore on, his loneliness closed in like a vice around him. He had considered calling a friend, but the consolation of a man would have just involved a lot of back slapping about the fickle, conniving nature of women. Buster didn’t need that. He didn’t believe that. So he turned to the familiar consolation of whiskey, but that wasn’t good either. He just wanted Dot. She was his best friend, his best comfort.

“What did she say?” Dot asked, reaching across the table until the tips of her fingers bumped against the side of his hand. He took her hand and squeezed it.

“Well, at first she seemed like she wanted a divorce, but somehow along the way she changed her mind, like she wanted to drag it out and make it as painful as possible if she would give me one at all. I don’t know how it happened. It was the oddest conversation I’ve ever had.” He shrugged, not wanting to rehash the cold set of Natalie’s jaw when the words custody and alimony had passed her lips. Bitterly, he wondered if Dot would even still want him when he was bled dry by an ex-wife and a film studio that thought of him as a petulant child to control.

Even the embittering effects of whiskey couldn't get that fear to fully coalesce in his mind, though. She wouldn’t abandon him even if he lost his every worldly possession. That thought should have comforted him, but just then it only made him feel worse and he sunk into his chair.

“It’ll be alright,” she said gently, stroking his cheek with the backs of her fingers.

He couldn’t see how, and he knew her assurances were based on hope alone. He swayed slightly in his chair and realized he couldn’t remember how full that bottle of whiskey had been when he’d sat down. 

Dot seemed to read his mind, silently sliding the bottle out of his reach and replacing the top.

“You shouldn’t drink alone, Buster.”

He grunted a non-committal agreement. “Would you drink with me if I asked?” 

Dot just chuckled but he knew she was considering carefully.

“I would drink with you to have a good time. To celebrate. But I’ve seen up close all the good that comes of drinking to forget. And so have you, I think.” She gave him a meaningful glance that he didn’t look at but that he felt all the same. “You must not do this. Especially not now.”

“Are you angry at me?” he asked, thinking that he sounded like a scared little boy and hating himself for it.

Dot rested her chin in her hand with her elbow on the table. She shook her head. “No.”

“How many times can I wake you up in the middle of the night because I’ve drank myself into a hole before you do get angry at me?”

She opened her mouth as if to speak. Her first instinct was to say that she would never grow tired of tending to him, he knew, but then she reconsidered.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. The truth hung in the air like cigarette smoke. So there was a limit to her patience. “But I do know that, if you’re capable of calling for me when you’ve drank yourself into a hole, then you are certainly able to call me when you are still just thinking about digging a hole.”

Buster’s head swam. “I don’t follow.”

She sighed, getting up from her chair to sit on the table instead, dangling her legs next to him. Reflexively, he pushed her skirt up high enough to kiss the tops of her knees.

“The next time you are feeling kinda down n’ out, and you’re thinking a drink or six might help, call me first. You may have one drink while you are waiting for me to get here. Then let me take care of you from there. We’ll see if I can distract you.”

Buster cocked an eyebrow at her. “Oh? I see.”

She laughed, blushing softly and running her fingers through his hair as he laid his head on her lap. “Let me try, at least. I know you said you don’t want me to worry about any of it, but I’m going to worry about it anyway and I’d rather worry with you than be left in the dark. You know I--

“Will you marry me?” He asked, turning his head so his cheek rested on her lap as he looked up at her.

Dot froze for a moment, then shook her head minutely.

“Why?”

“A girl would have to be either stupid or devious to accept a proposal from a man with a belly full of whiskey.” She stroked his hair as she spoke, as if she were comforting an unhappy cat. “I like to think I’m neither of those things.”

“Mm.” he agreed, letting his eyes shut against his foolish disappointment. “I’ll ask again in the morning.”

“You’ll still already be married in the morning.”

He furrowed his brows and turned his face away from the light. “I’ll ask every day until you can say yes,” he said, his voice muffled yet stubbornly defiant against her skirt.

He heard her laugh again as she gently scratched her fingernails against the back of his neck. Even when he was so discomfited, so antsy and irritable, she was able to make goosebumps rise along the back of his arms and his shoulders soften and relax.

“Okay, Buster,” she whispered. “Ask me every day.”


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dot sleeps on a train.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fully aware that I'm playing fast and loose with the real life timeline here but oh well. Is "canon divergence" a term that applies to historical figures? Hah. Whatever.

Buster watched the cloud of milk in his coffee disperse for a moment before he stirred it in. The small kitchen table had a cloth on it now that Dot was there more often than not. Other tokens of her presence dotted the house, the flowers on the windowsill, the hairbrush and perfume next to his comb and watch on top of the dresser, her hat next to his on the coat rack. She sat across from him but she wasn’t looking at him, she was gazing out the window and sipping her own coffee. She was already dressed for work but the corners of her eyes still drooped with sleep. She glowed in the morning. He’d always thought so.

“Dot, will you marry me?”

She smiled, still looking out the window.

“Ask again tomorrow.”

The way she smiled every time he asked had, at first, been a reassurance. She wanted to say yes. But as the days went on, the fact that she wanted to say yes was beginning to be eclipsed by the reasons why she couldn’t. Just wanting to be married wasn’t enough, not for him and, though she never complained, he knew it wasn’t enough for her either. He remembered how she’d once cried against his shoulder, saying that she wasn’t “glamorous enough” to be a married man’s mistress. Glamour had nothing to do with it, but her despair in the face of her perceived sinfulness was real. She deserved better, and sooner or later she would see that for herself.

Was it cruel to keep asking, knowing that she was forced to refuse him over and over and over again?

Natalie had never answered a phone call since his departure, and he’d been by the house more than once trying to force a confrontation, but she was never there. He wondered how long this could go on before he could have grounds for divorce based on spousal desertion. He didn’t know, but he had a feeling that Natalie did, and she wouldn’t let it go on that long. So he kept trying the house. At first he had kept these attempts at communication with Natalie a secret from Dot, not wanting to trouble her with any of his own problems. Now he told her, he told her everything, and Dot nodded sedately when he mentioned that he would try at the house again that afternoon.

Just as Dot was finishing her coffee, a knock came at the door. Assuming it was a friend, and now that Dot’s presence at the bungalow was old news, he didn’t think twice about letting her answer it.

Natalie’s tight laugh around the corner had Buster scrambling from his seat. 

“I thought you might be here playing house with my husband,” Natalie was saying as Buster came into view. Dot’s cheeks were red and her gaze flitted between her feet and the street behind Natalie. “Ah, Buster. There you are.”

Natalie strode past Dot and into the house, leaving Dot holding the door open awkwardly.

“Here I am,” Buster said. “You make it sound like I’ve been the one in hiding.”

“Can you send her away? There are things we have to discuss,” Natalie said.

“No. Dot and I are having breakfast. You can’t just barge in here like you’ve been kept waiting. Come back this afternoon.” Buster crossed to the door and lightly placed his hand on the small of Dot’s back.

“I have plans for this afternoon,” Natalie said.

“It’s alright, Buster. I need to hurry out anyway.” Dot’s voice was small in a way that Buster hated. She sounded deferential. Submissive. The smallness of her voice and her desire to minimize conflict, even at her own expense, mirrored a similar instinct in himself that he didn’t like to acknowledge. 

“Can I pick you up after work?” he asked, lowering his voice to her ear.

“Of course.” But when he kissed her she blushed and shied away.

Within moments of Natalie’s arrival, Dot was gone. Left alone with his wife, Buster felt his bravado drain from him. Nat had been pointedly looking away as he said goodbye to Dot, but now her cool eyes were on him again. It felt like she could see right through him and read his every thought. Well, they’d been married for long enough, she probably could.

“What did you come here to say, Nat? Might as well say it now.”

She lowered her eyes, adjusting cuffs of her dress. She looked almost childlike. With Dot gone, she had lost much of her bravado too. With Dot gone, the fact that their marital issues really had little to do with the ex-maid became obvious. It ran deeper, this fissure between man and wife, and it’s history was so complex that for a while they both stood there in silence, taking in the crumbling foundations of their marriage and not knowing where to start. Silence had long been the main defining characteristic of their relationship. He wished he could say he’d gotten used to it.

“I want to try again,” she said at last, dropping her hands to her sides and moving closer to him.

“Try again?” Buster didn’t move as she placed her hands on his chest and slouched so that she could look up at him through thick, blackened eyelashes; despite her high heels that made her nearly the same height as him. The strategic slouch was an appeal to his masculine pride that he identified immediately.

“Yes, try again. My temper got the best of me but I’m calmed down now.” When her posture failed to arouse she reaction she was hoping for, she straightened up again, interlacing her fingers  patiently in front of her.

“I want a divorce, Natalie. I want to marry Dot. I’ve been unfaithful and everyone knows it. No one would blame you.”

Natalie shook her head and wandered into the kitchen. “No, Buster. I’ve spoken to my sisters about it and I’ve put a lot of thought into it. I don’t want to be divorced.”

“Natalie, I--” he started to follow her.

“No. I didn’t come here to argue this with you. I just came to tell you...well I was thinking...wouldn’t it be a good idea to go away for a while?” She tapped her nail along the edge of Dot’s coffee mug.

“Away?”

“Yes, away.” She said with a rehearsed smile. “We can get away from everything and talk things over. Maybe if we just spent some time together we will come to some resolution. Let’s go to Spain.”

“Spain?”

“You keep repeating me.”

Buster pushed his hands through his hair and scoffed. He wanted to sit down but he felt like it would make him more vulnerable, somehow, with her standing up.

“I’m just a little confused, that’s all.” He settled on leaning heavily on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “I told you I want a divorce and you respond that you want a honeymoon? We can talk here as easily as we can in Spain.

“Not really. Here we’re surrounded by so many things, work and the children and your friends and my friends and Dot. Is a couple weeks away to look things over and hash things out really too much to ask? I ask for so little, I’ve given you so much free reign, looking the other way time and time again, and now you won’t even give me a chance?”

Buster put his head in his hands and groaned. He heard her shuffle her feet, clearly uncomfortable with his uncharacteristic display of emotion.

“If I take you to Spain, do you promise to consider divorce?” He asked, noting the absurdity of the sentence.    


“We can discuss it there, away from Dot.”

“If that’s what it takes,” he said. "Sure, Natalie. Let's go to Spain."

 

 

When Dot climbed into the car after work that day, Buster smiled warmly at her but it was that peculiar smile that says “Don’t worry, but we need to talk.” She folded her hands in her lap and waited, but he didn’t bring it up until she was back in his kitchen again, watching him while he poured himself a whiskey. He hadn’t gotten drunk since the time she’d found him slumped over the kitchen table, but she still felt relieved when, after pouring his glass, he replaced the decanter back on the high shelf and closed the cabinet door. 

“I’m sorry about this morning. I had no idea she would show up like that. It won’t happen again,” he said after taking a drink and leaning back against the counter.

“It’s alright, Buster. She’s your wife.”

‘I’m going on a trip with her,” He said flatly.

Dot swallowed the wave of jealousy that rose in her throat like bile. Her mind flashed back to his trip to New York, and all the other times he’d left her behind. The tip of her nose tingled and she held her breath trying not to make a fool of herself by crying.

“Oh.” 

Right away she knew that he and Natalie were attempting a reconciliation. She wanted them to fail, but as usual when she dared to notice how unchristian her feelings were, her jealousy was rivaled only by her guilt.

He was waiting for her to say more, but when he noticed that she was fighting back tears, he hurried to fill the silence and give her a moment to recover.

“I told her again that I wanted a divorce but she said she wouldn’t discuss it until we were in a different country from you.”

Dot laughed dryly. 

“I won’t love you any less in Spain,” he said softly.

“Spain?”

“Yeah. But listen, I may be able to convince her to see reason.”

Despite his assurance, there was something defeated in his voice. He was already apologizing.

“And suppose she doesn’t? Suppose she really does want to stay married to you?” Dot asked, not really wanting to hear his answer. The clock above the fireplace in the living room chimes, cutting through the tension that thickened the air in the little house. Buster sank into the chair next to her.

“You’ll make a wonderful wife, Dot.” He reached for her hand and pulled it into his lap, squeezing. “I think you deserve to be married properly to a man who can give you what you’re worthy of. A good, honest life.”

Dot’s throat felt thick and tight and she couldn't bring herself to look up at him. She stared at his hand around hers. She would  make a wonderful wife, but not for him. He’d been biting his nails since she left that morning, she could tell because his cuticles were torn and raw. She wondered how long he’d taken to compose this speech, and how he’d imagined her reaction would go. Was he expecting her to make a jealous scene? Was he bracing for hysterics? She took a deep, steadying breath and determined to be calm and understanding.

“I’ll try, Dot. I’ll beg if it comes to that. But I can’t force her to sign the papers and I’m the one who cheated, not her.”

Dot scoffed, wiping her cheeks and pulling herself together. 

“What a mess this is, isn’t it?” She gave him a watery smile. “I’m sorry.”

Buster’s powers of conversation seemed to have been depleted by that short but fraught conversation. Dot wondered how long he and Natalie had talked while she was gone. She didn’t begrudge his quietness now though, as he scraped his chair across the floor to edge closer to her and pulled her into a tight hug. She fell into him, tucking her face into the crook of his neck and inhaling the faint scent of his shaving cream. She wondered if he would propose again in the morning as he had been doing, or if the illusory hope that he would one day be hers in truth was over now.

\---

A week and a half later, Dot was alone again. Despite growing up her whole life sleeping in a bed alone, she found it difficult to re-acclimate to it. It had taken no time at all to get used to sleeping in the warm nest of Buster’s body heat, so why was it so hard to return to normal?

Ms. Peterson noticed the change in Dot right away. Where once she and Dot had shared laughter and knowing glances, now Ms. Peterson’s glances were more furtive and worrying. She’d begun to insist on Dot taking second helpings at supper. She didn’t say anything about it directly though, she simply waited for her to tell her what had gone wrong with Buster.

“Will you be here for dinner tonight?” She asked Dot obliquely, not asking about Buster outright, but his name hung, unspoken, in the air anyway.

“Buster has gone on a vacation with his wife. He’ll be gone a few weeks,” Dot finally blurted.

“Oh, sweetie. I’m sorry.”

Dot laughed. “It’s an odd thing to be sorry about.”

“We’re entitled to so little in this world, we may as well stop apologizing for what we  _ are _ entitled to. And if not our own thoughts, then what?” Ms. Peterson slid a plate of scrambled eggs in front of Dot.

Dot picked up her fork and took a bite, chewing thoughtfully.

“He says he wants to marry me. He says he wants to divorce Natalie Talmadge and be with me. Isn’t that…”

“Romantic?”

“I was going to say Insane. Naive. Stupid also works.”

“Do you want to marry him?” Ms. Peterson asked between forkfuls of eggs as if they were chatting about nothing more important than the weather,

“That’s not the problem. I just worry...I mean...a woman having an affair with a married man, he promises that he intends to leave his wife and marry her...it’s a tale as old as time, isn’t it? Am I making a fool of myself?”

“Is it making a fool of yourself to be young and in love? It’ll be alright in the end either way. It was a good romance, no matter what happens.”

Dot nodded perfunctorily, not really believing the woman and finding the advice somewhat trite and unsatisfying, but as she was at work and throughout the next couple of days, the truth and comfort of what she’d said sank in. So maybe she would never be Mrs. Keaton, and maybe she wouldn’t get to keep him for the rest of her life. That didn’t erase the fact that he had once loved her. In the midst of feather dusters and piles of laundry, Dot had been noticed, picked out, and liked despite all her flaws and inadequacies. She had been young and in love.

She did her best to prepare for the worst, and not get her hopes up that Buster would come home and propose for real and everything would fall into place. She worked, and slept, and ate, and did all she could not to think about it at all.

It was raining on the day when Dot came home from a long shift to an envelope on the table from her sister. She sighed as she picked it up. Her paychecks weren’t what they had been at the Villa, but she had been sending back as much as she could spare.  A fresh round of pleading for more was hardly what Dot needed that evening. She ripped the envelope open, intending to skim it’s contents and deal with it in the morning.

“Mom doesn’t have long. You’d better come home if you can.  -A”

Dot stared at the words, waiting for their impact to hit her. She thought her hand should be shaking, making the letter waver in her hand. She should faint. Do something. But she just stared dumbly at the letter until Ms. Peterson looked up and asked what was wrong. The date scrawled at the top of the page was five days previous.

The preparations for her departure back to Michigan were hasty and rushed. She was in such a state of shock and numbness that Dot hardly had a moment to be afraid until she was on the train. There, images of her mother dying on the living room couch wove themselves between images of Buster coming home from Spain and finding that she was gone. She felt a desire to cry, but no tears came. Instead she slept, the rhythmic chugging of the tracks beneath her lulling her into a state of oblivion. As she slept dreamlessly she hovered between two worlds, her old life in Michigan and her new one in California, both sides on the verge of crumbling away from her. 


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which the Author Writes The End

Natalie was reading a magazine while lounging on a wicker chair in the slanting orange light of a spanish sunset. Buster watched her out of the corner of his eye as he smoked a cigarette. For days she had managed to fill their hours with so many things to do and people to see that he could almost believe that she had forgotten the purpose of the trip in the first place. Almost.

“Natalie.”

“I know, Buster.” She closed the magazine and smoothed it across her lap.

“I want a divorce.” He reminded her calmly, without emotion, but firmly.

The wind picked up the ends of her hair and Natalie looked away.

“Well, I don’t. But I’ve decided that you may keep your mistress. The fact that she was a maid upset me at first but now I see that it doesn’t make a difference who she is so long as she sees to your needs.

Buster clicked his tongue in annoyance but she continued as if she didn’t hear.

“So long as she knows, and everyone knows, that I am your only wife. And so long as you don’t go spending all your money on her. The children and I must be able to go on as we have been. As long as that is the case, you may keep Dot.”

“You make it sound like she’s a stray cat I’ve carried home.” Buster stubbed his cigarette out on the wrought iron ledge of the hotel balcony. She only glanced at him, then looked away again.

“I can’t accept those terms,” he said.

“Is she insisting on you marrying her, then? She can’t be content as a mistress?” She said it flippantly, clearly wishing for this conversation to end. She smoothed her hair and wouldn’t meet his gaze. She hid it better than he did, but he thought that, if nothing else, at least they had this in common. They both had a dogged determination to ignore problems, an acute discomfort in the face of hard facts, and they both had been fools enough to think that two people like that could make a happy marriage.

Buster shook his head slowly. “I’m the one that’s insisting.”

“Why?” Natalie finally looked at him long enough to see him. “Is she pregnant?”

“No.”

That seemed to relieve her. “Then why insist? Do you hate me so much that you can’t bear to be my husband even in name?”

“I don’t hate you.” He said offhand, as if it was obvious. But then he paused, maybe it wasn’t obvious at all. “It’s because she’s an honest woman and--” Natalie scoffed but Buster continued, “and it’s wrong for me to force her into a life that’s unnatural to her. Either way, I will disappoint one of you, and when it comes right down to the facts, why should the woman I disappoint be the one who loves me?”

“I’m sure she’ll come around to it. She’s done well enough as your woman on the side so far, hasn’t she?”

He sighed. Natalie was, as ever, immovable as a statue, but Buster couldn’t seem to hold still. He paced the length of the small balcony, feeling her eyes on him with every step.

“Why don’t you want a divorce?” He asked. “You can’t say it’s because you love me. Is it really just the money?”

“Just the money? You say it like money isn’t important. Yes, of course it’s the money. But it’s not just that. The most important thing I’ve ever been is your wife. Without you I go back to being a nobody.”

“You’re a Talmadge!” He said, his brows furrowed in confusion and annoyance.

“Yes,” she said bitterly, twisting her hands in her lap. “I’m the ugliest and least talented Talmadge. What an honor.”

Buster looked over his shoulder at her and stopped pacing. 

“You were always the cutest Talmadge to me,” he said softly. Natalie looked away sharply as if she were crying and Buster knelt down next to her chair.

“Dot loves me, Nat. Do you? Did you ever?”

She really was crying, and for once she made no move to hide it. A tear rolled conspicuously down the side of her nose until it disappeared into the corner of her lips. She didn’t wipe it away. Buster was so shaken by the sight of her tears that he didn’t wipe it away either.

“I think I did. I don’t know. I think I did,” she whispered so quietly it sounded like she was talking more to herself than to him

“I wouldn’t let anything terrible happen to you or the boys. You’re never gonna be poor. And you, of all people, aren’t ever going to be alone or friendless,” he said, trying to take her hand, but she slid her fingers out from his grasp.

“Money and fame are important, sure, but do they matter more to you than me? Damn it, Natalie, you don’t have to love me but we were friends once, weren’t we?” He had his hands on the arms of her chair, leaning over her, trying to make her look at him.

“Hey Buster! Natalie! Aren’t you coming to dinner?” A shout came from the courtyard below. Natalie sniffed and quickly wiped away the tear streak on her cheek.

“Yes! We’re coming now!” Natalie shouted down to her sister who’d come along on the trip. Buster suspected that she’d been invited specifically to serve as a buffer between himself and Natalie in order to postpone or prevent this very conversation. Well, she’d almost succeeded.

“Come on,” Natalie said softly, standing up and smoothing out her skirt. “Let’s go.”

 

\---  
“Well Bobby, you will just have to try at other places. Just because one place can’t hire you doesn’t mean you give up,” Dot said, pulling at the black veil that was pinned to her hat. “Now please, I don’t want to discuss this right now.”

The funeral for Dot’s mother was exceedingly simple to the point of being austere, but convincing her brother to continue his job search while their mother was being buried was too much for Dot to bear. She wanted to cry. She wanted the space and privacy to have a good long sob, but from the moment she arrived at home only to learn that she had come too late to say goodbye to her mother, there had been no time for tears. Between throwing together a funeral with only what money she had in her purse, and coping with every other domestic crisis that her brother or sister could come up with in their nervous grief, Dot had scarcely had a moment to breathe, let alone cry.

“But Dot, there’s nothing here. What can I do?” Bobby continued, tugging at the sleeves of his jacket. At twenty years old, he was still growing, and his old suit showed it. He’d already been taller than Dot when she’d left for California initially, but now he towered over his sisters despite an apologetic slouch.

“Shh!” Anne hissed from the other side of Dot. Anne’s admonition had a greater effect than Dot’s pleading, and all three siblings were sedate and quiet through the rest of the funeral> Dot felt nothing but a coldness and a vague sense of fear as her mother’s coffin was lowered into its grave. Anne cried silently, and Bobby chewed his lip until it looked like it might start to bleed, but Dot was like stone even as they all walked back to the small apartment they’d grown up in. 

The familiar furniture and the yellowed light that pooled around the old lamp in the corner wrapped Dot in a blanket of soured nostalgia. She stared at the spoon in her tea, her thumb tracing the design in the handle that her touch knew like the memory of a dream.

“Can’t you sit down, Bobby? You’re driving me up the wall,” Anne said from her slumped position on the chair near the window.

Bobby attempted to obey her, but it was only a few minutes before he was up again and pacing the floor. Anne complained with a heavy sigh.

“Let him pace if it helps him,” Dot said.

The Addams siblings had never been what Dot would call close. Bobby and Anne, maybe. But Dot had always related to them through the distance of responsibility. Theirs was a family of people who, for the most part, kept to themselves, and dinner table talk had always been relegated to the necessities of living. Dot had never much minded the tight-lipped nature of her family, being responsible for the money had been enough of a burden without also being responsible for their emotions. Only now, when she found herself strangely empty and tongue-tied in the wake of their mother’s death did she question their dynamic. The three of them had been sniping at each other and quarrelling ever since Dot had arrived.

“Are you leaving right away now that she’s buried?” Anne asked later that night as Dot was putting away dishes after their small dinner. The scent of cooked onion and sympathy roses thickened the air, but not as much as the awkwardness Dot felt at moving around this apartment that she’d been so desperate to leave.

“I don’t know, Anne. I have a job in California, and as I’m the only one bringing in a paycheck… But don’t worry, I did notice the hostility in your tone. Do you want me to stay here?”

 

Dot heard Anne sniff and she immediately regretted her clipped tone. She fought against an ingrained discomfort at the thought of consoling her sister and abandoned the bowls she was drying. Dot placed her hand between her little sister’s shoulder blades and hid her surprise when Anne threw herself into her arms and started to weep.

Dot didn’t shush her. She didn’t say anything. She held her sister and let her cry for the both of them, her quiet sobs filling the odd, hollow feeling inside Dot. Bobby had gone out for a walk, but when he returned to the sight of Anne crying in Dot’s arms, he slumped into a nearby chair and patted Anne’s shoulder. He didn’t cry either, but his silence was thick and heavy.

After that, the siblings didn’t argue as much. They settled into a rhythm, but with the uncertainty of what they would do next hanging over every conversation. Dot knew that she must return to work, but abandoning her siblings after such a short time with them seemed impossible.

One thing she knew for certain was that being home again felt like failure. Each night she laid down in the bed that had once been hers and tried to cry. She conjured up the thought of the warmth of Buster’s arms, her mother’s voice, the feeling of digging her thumbnail into a fresh orange right off the tree. She kept waiting for the grief to come, but each night she went to bed feeling blank and empty, drifting off to sleep as she listed all the things she needed to do the next day.

Days bled together, the daily necessities of life rushing in to fill the void of grief. 

AFter a week had passed, as Dot pinned her hair and thought about what to do for dinner later that day, she tried not to think about her conflicting feelings about going back to California. All she wanted to do was go back home, her new home, and return to the difficult, wonderful life she’d made for herself. She missed Ms. Peterson and little Timmy. She even missed the hat shop. She missed Buster the most, in such a way that she hardly thought of him at all. At least not consciously. The longing for him was a dull ache that throbbed constantly in the background like a persistent drum beat behind every conversation and every thought. She just wanted everything to go back to normal.

Suddenly, something snapped inside her as she stared at her face in the mirror, dutifully pinning her hair into neat coils at the name of her neck. The image of herself twisted and she grimaced, tossing a hair pin down on the floor with painfully unsatisfying tink.

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. If there was one theme, one word, that ran through the course of her entire life, it was guilt. She had no right to want to play as a child when she had young siblings to take care of. She should have been satisfied working to support her family, not resentful. She was a monster for feeling relief when her mother finally succumbed to her long illness. She was horrible for what she’d done to Natalie. The suffocating weight of a lifetime of guilt seemed to hit her all at once and she gripped the edge of the dresser with two hands. She bowed her head, her body swayed, her teeth ground together and she willed herself one last time to cry. Crying would help. She’d always been a crybaby, knowing how much calmer and quieter she felt afterwards. But still it wouldn’t come. She groaned instead, wondering if she’d lost her ability to form tears for good.

“Are you ready, Dot?” Anne asked, knocking on the door.

“Almost.” She tried to make her voice sound normal, hurrying to pull herself together and finish doing her hair. She felt like a fool, stooping down to pick up the pin she’d thrown on the ground.

The sun was shining relentlessly on that Monday morning. Dot squinted into the light as they walked into town. With Dot’s prodding, Bobby had secured an interview with the locksmith. Meanwhile, Anne and Dot had determined that new curtains in the living room was surely the first step towards finding peace again. A trip to the shops couldn't hurt either. If Dot ignored the burning pit of grief in her chest, it almost felt like old times again, with the three Addamses walking into town together. 

The girls left Bobby at the locksmith’s office and studiously refused to acknowledge how important it was that he got that job, and how devastated they all would be if he didn’t. There was an unspoken expectation that no one would get their hopes up, as well as an equally unspoken understanding that everyone’s hopes were about as high as they could get. If Bobby was working, Dot wouldn’t feel quite so much like she was abandoning her siblings to helplessness when she left them. 

Dot and Anne mostly didn’t speak at all on their way to the fabric store. At least until they passed a group of teens about Anne’s age. They seemed to know her, smiling and waving. Dot slowed down, expecting Anne to stop to say hello, but when a boy said hello, Anne shook her head and told him to shush. The boy glanced at Dot then back at Anne and smiled, his ears going red. He was at least a head taller than Anne, but probably the same weight as her for how skinny he was. He had that uncomfortable look about him of a person caught between boyhood and adulthood, never quite knowing which side he fell on on any particular day. He straightened up, going from boy to man, and removed his hat.

“‘Morning, Miss,” he said, nodding politely to Dot.

“Good morning…” Dot said, glancing from him to Anne. As quickly as they had appeared, the boy and his cohorts were on their way, stalking down the street like they owned it. They probably did. No one was ever quite so powerful as a group of teens in a small town.

“Who was that?” Dot asked as they stepped into the shop.

“Nobody,” Anne said all too quickly.

Dot laughed under her breath and began to leaf through the fabric samples.

“Your beau?” She inquired gently

“Of course not.”

Dot glanced at Anne. The nineteen year old was blushing, and Dot wondered if their mother had known that Anne was seeing a boy. She couldn’t imagine that she did. Dot was seized with a desire to offer some sisterly wisdom, woman to woman, but nothing helpful came to her. 

“What’s his name?”

Anne didn’t answer at first, pretending to be fascinated by a display of colored threads.

“David Moncliffe,” she said finally.

“Is he nice?”

Anne nodded and Dot realized how much there was about her sister that she didn’t know. When she’d left, Anne was just learning to darn socks and was as likely to suddenly break out in perfect french as she was to notice a boy.

“I like this buttery yellow one, don’t you?” Dot redirected, fondling a fabric swatch.

“It’s like sunshine. Just what we need,” Anne agreed.

With enough fabric purchased to sew curtains with, the two women left the shop and headed back towards the locksmith’s. Bobby stepped out as they got nearer.

“Does Bobby know?” Dot asked as he crossed the street towards them.

“Not yet. And please don’t tell him. I will when everything’s calmed down.” Anne said under her breath.

“Your secret is safe with me,” Dot said.

Bobby was tight lipped as they walked home, saying only that the man had told him he needed to think it over. The lightened atmosphere around the discovery of Anne’s clandestine love affair darkened with this news, but Dot tried not to show it.

“I’m sure he’ll hire you. You’ll see,” She said as airily as she could, though not feeling at all as confident as she sounded.

The three of them were quiet for the rest of the walk, and Dot settled back into the familiar rut of guilt and anxiousness that she’d been running along since arriving there. Her siblings went in ahead of her when they got back to the apartment, but she stopped at the mailbox, expecting bills. Instead, she pulled out a note, folded in half and sealed with a bit of string. The outside just said her name. She slid the string off the paper with nervous hands.

“Got the note you left with Ms. Peterson. I couldn’t wait for you, but I didn’t want to show up unannounced either.  
Room 52 in the main street hotel. Come when you can.  
Buster”

Dot ran inside, clutching the note in her hand. Breathless, she flew into the kitchen where Bobby and Anne were.

“Anne, can you cook dinner tonight?” She asked.

Anne cocked a brow at her. “Who do you think has been doing the cooking while you’ve been gone?”

Dot blinked, unsure why the realization that Anne had been feeding the family for years stung her so much.

“I’m going to meet a friend,” she said.

“A friend?” Bobby was incredulous.

Dot sighed, agitatedly. She wanted to run out of the house and slam the screen door behind her. “It’s a long story, can I please explain another time?”

Anne shrugged, looking at Bobby. “It’s no business of mine. Go see your friend. I can get supper served on my own.”

Anne’s blithe acceptance seemed to convince Bobby, who tugged again on his sleeve. “Well, ya don’t need our permission, do you?”

Dot silently promised herself to let out the sleeves of that jacket before she went back to California, at least. 

Dot was halfway out the door when it occurred to her that she may want to tidy her hair or change into a fresh dress before going to meet him. Nothing could have stopped her then, though, and she put her own appearance out of her mind. Anyway, he knew what she looked like. There was no sense in a delay.

The sunny morning had begun to fade into a cloudy afternoon and as she hurried down the stairs of the apartment a cloud crossed in front of the sun, casting the world in shadow. A cool breeze accompanied the sudden grayness and a shiver ran down her spine. She forced herself not to wonder if the sudden change in weather was an omen. Was she was running to him just to be told that he’d reconciled with Natalie and wouldn’t see her anymore?

She decided then, firmly, that it didn’t matter. She only wanted to see him even if it was the last time.

The hotel was the largest building in town, but still laughably small compared to what Buster would have been used to. Dot may have been embarrassed at her humble hometown, but there was no room in her heart for anything other than the spine tingling anticipation of seeing him

He’s just inside, just through those doors. Up the stairs and to the left. Room 53. She knocked.

“Dot, I’m so sorry about your mother,” he said even as the door was still swinging open. 

Dot found herself with no words. She stood there, stupid and mute, staring blankly at him as she was struck by his sudden nearness. After the rush of coming to him, she realized that she didn’t actually know if she had any right to touch him anymore.

“Dot, come here.” His eyes were bewildered, worried, as he took her hand and pulled her into his room, closing the door behind her. Her hand was limp in his and she struggled to find words to explain to him the horrible empty feeling that she couldn’t seem to shake.

He led her into the middle of the room, taking both her hands in his. His shoulders were slumped and he looked like a lost child, not knowing what to do with her. Dot felt sorry for him, knowing that she was making him feel that way, and she attempted to diffuse the pressure by looking around the room.

“I’ve never been inside this hotel before,” she said, feeling like an idiot. “It’s nice.”

He didn’t say anything, but when she looked up at him, he was watching her intently, with so much patience and uncertainty in his eyes that she had to bite her lip to stop from...what? Crying? He slid one of his hands up her arm, clearly not knowing what to say.

“Oh Buster, I’ve had a rotten time.” Could such everyday words express this infernal gnawing? She didn’t think so, but he seemed to understand her despite her stunted words and he took both of her shoulders and pulled her close. By reflex, she buried her nose against his chest and gathered fistfuls of his sleeves. The silence pounded in her ears and there was something stiff about the way he held her. Fear trickled like adrenaline down her spine and she realized in horror that she couldn’t bear to lose him. All that talk about appreciating a love affair no matter how it ends was nonsense and the defenses she’d built up against the heartbreak of losing him crumbled away. Her eyes prickled with tears, and all at once the empty feeling she’d been hauling around with her filled up and she gripped him tighter, knowing she was about to make a fool of herself but not knowing how to stop it now that the tears had finally begun.

“She was already dead when I got here,” she sobbed. “I always thought, or I always hoped, that when she died I would be there and...and she’d take my hand and say ‘Dot, you’ve done so much for us, sacrificed so much. I’m sorry. Thank you.’ But she didn’t say anything! I wasn’t even here!” her words were muffled by sobs and the fabric of his shirt into which she spoke, but he heard her all the same.

“She knew, Dot. She was grateful, of course she was,” he murmured, but Dot wasn’t listening. The tears were hot and unstoppable now, it was like everything she’d ever been sad about in her life was bursting out of her now and she wailed like a child, beyond caring what he or anyone else thought about it.

Buster, for his part, was quiet as Dot howled. For once, it wasn’t that he didn’t know what to say in the face of someone else’s tears. This time, he had so many things he wanted to say, but he didn’t want to shush her. He held her close, sliding his hand over her back as comfortingly as he could and let her cry as hard as she wanted, without interrupting. When her trembling became so pronounced that her knees buckled, he lowered with her onto the floor. The wood floors were cool and hard, but she draped onto her knees as if crumbling under the weight of the world, throwing her arms around his neck. 

“I want my mother,” she cried helplessly.

“I know, baby. I know,” he whispered. Once again, he had left Dot to face something horrible all by herself. Once again, he was angry with himself for not being there for her when she needed him. His anger coiled around her grief and he squeezed her even tighter, his own eyes watering.

Time meant nothing then. Her sobs battled with the silence of the hotel room and, as the minutes ticked by interminably, the silence slowly, slowly, began to win out. She grew quiet, her body going still and limp against him, her crying softening into deep, shuddering breaths. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you,” he whispered against her ear.

“You couldn’t have known.” she offered weakly, her voice watery and broken.

“It doesn’t matter. I should have been with you.”

“But you came. You’re here now.” She straightened up slightly with a vain attempt to straighten his crumpled shirt.

“I’m here now,” he agreed.

The clock on the nightstand ticked loudly and a flock of chickadees swarmed a tree outside the window as Dot wiped her cheeks with her sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” she said, smoothing her hair with her hands and taking a deep breath. “I’m alright. Really.”

He told her not to be sorry, but she continued to pull herself together, dabbing at her eyes and tugging on her clothes, attempting to erase the signs of her grief with little success. Her attempt to control herself broke his heart, and he wanted to yank her back into his arms and tell her to cry more. Cry for hours and hours if she wanted. But she just sat there, slowing her breath, settling her hands softly into her lap.

“Thank you for coming to help me,” she said quietly after a time. “But please, I have to know. It’s better to tell me now than to wait. Have I lost you too?”

It felt wrong, somehow, to talk about it then. Her grief over her mother was still so thick in the room, to speak of anything else felt profane. But she met his eyes with such trepidatious hope that he couldn’t deny answering. He shook his head minutely.

“No,” he said softly.

“No?”

“Let me make it up to you. You’ll never face anything alone ever again.” He said as he reached for her hand, bringing her knuckles to his lips. “If you’ll have me.”

“You and Natalie--”

“Dot, will you marry me?” He squeezed her hand, his heart racing for fear that she might refuse after all.

“Truly?” She asked.

“Yes. Truly.”

He saw her throat flex as she swallowed, her lips pushed together to keep from quivering. Her eyes welled up again and finally, finally, she nodded.

Relief washed over him and he took her face in his hands, touching his forehead to hers as she began to cry again.

“Yes?” 

She nodded again, her nose brushing against his. “Yes. Yes, I will.”

On the hard floor of that quaint hotel room, he pulled his fiancee onto his lap, her arms wrapping around his neck, and kissed her. He knew he couldn’t kiss away the grief of losing a mother, nor could he kiss away the pain of a lost childhood or the strain a rocky love affair, but he tried anyway. He tried his best. 

 

\---  
Dot was hurriedly sewing, sitting in her mother’s chair in the living room, as Buster entertained Bobby and Anne with stories of his glory days of the not-so-distant past. She knew his new arrangement with MGM was not a dream for him but she also knew that he wasn’t who he had been recently, a man slumped into a corner of his bed half dead with drink and hopelessness. A lightness radiated from him, and there was an ease in the way he stood now, one foot crossed over the other and leaning against the counter in the kitchen she’d grown up in. Things would get better. There were more glory days in his future, she knew. It would take time for his divorce to be official, but whether they were married in a month or in a year, it didn’t matter. They’d be together, and it would be okay.

But before anything else, she had to let out the sleeves of Bobby’s jacket. 

She picked at the stitches, her eyes straining with the effort to focus on such small stitches while her whole heart was soaring with excitement. A few more days had passed since the engagement, her siblings had been brought up to speed with varying degrees of astonishment, but things were settled down now. And it was time to go home. 

“Bobby, come try this on!” She called, standing up and shaking out the jacket.

The extra inch in the shoulders made a world of difference. Bobby preened discreetly at his reflection in the window, testing the new length by raising his arms over his head.

“You know, I could have done that if you’d asked,” Anne said, coming into the room, with Buster close behind.

“Gee, I didn’t want to ask my baby sister to do something like that for me,” Bobby said, rubbing his fingers over the stubble on his chin, a gesture of embarrassment he’d developed long before he’d had stubble to worry over.

“Big sisters are fair game, though?” Dot laughed.

Bobby shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. “You’ve always taken good care of us, Dot.”

Dot wavered. Ever since the hotel, she’d found that her inability to cry had swung to the opposite end of the spectrum and she was going all misty over the slightest things. Buster assured her that with time she would return to normal, and she trusted him, but she chewed her lip to stop from embarrassing herself in front of her brother anyway. She glanced at Buster, who smiled softly, reading her thoughts. 

She had taken good care of them. She’d always done her best. She wouldn’t unlearn her guilt in a day, but she could try to believe that she’d been enough while her heart got used to the idea.

“Buster, I keep forgetting to ask. What time is the train leaving, exactly?” Dot asked, standing up and smoothing her dress. Everything was packed and she was ready to go.

“Train?” 

“Yes, the train back home. Have you not gotten tickets yet?” She asked.

“I didn’t take a train.” He was crossing his arms in that rascal-y way of his and Dot looked up from her suitcase, which she had begun to go over one more time to be sure she had everything.

“You drove all the way here?”

“No.” He was downright grinning now, a sight that was still new enough for Bobby and Anne that they both stared at him.

“Oh Buster, you didn’t.”

“He didn’t what?” Anne asked.

 

\---  
When the taxi pulled into the airfield along that long country road, Bobby began to laugh. Dot smacked his arm in the cramped backseat and Anne, on the other side of her, looked like she might start to laugh too.

“Sorry, Mr. Keaton. There’s no way Dot’s stepping foot on that.” Bobby nodded towards the small plane waiting for them in the field.

Buster, who had secured the front seat of the taxi by virtue of knowing the way to the particular field he’d landed in, looked over his shoulder at the Doubting Thomas and cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, yes she is,” he said, producing a folded paper from his pocket and handing it back to Bobby.

Dot recognized the handwritten contract immediately and her cheeks flushed when Bobby gave a low whistle.

“What’s it say?” Anne asked.

Bobby cleared his throat.

“I, the undersigned, do hereby grant Mr. Joseph “Buster” Keaton permission to drag me physically into an airplane one time,” he read. “And it’s got her signature plain as day at the bottom.”

“Well,” Anne said, throwing an arm over Dot’s shoulders. “It was nice knowing you.” 

“Shush.” Buster laughed, twisting to see Anne, who sat directly behind him. Looking then at Dot, who was perched in the middle seat, he added, “It’s perfectly safe. I got here alright, didn’t I?”

But she wasn’t really listening. She was watching as a man, the pilot presumably, jogged towards the taxi.

There was a soft breeze that drifted over the grassy field as they all piled out of the taxi and Dot and Buster retrieved their luggage from the trunk. The scent of wet dirt from the rain overnight was clean and familiar. Dot was afraid of the plane, but the pounding in her chest felt like being alive.

She hung behind while Buster talked to the pilot and carried their things into the small plane. Standing opposite her brother and sister, Dot wished for something to say. Fighting tears, those embarrassing tears that came so easily now, she hugged them instead. First Anne, then Bobby.

“I love you,” she said, feeling awkward but needing to say it aloud at least this once. “If you need anything, anything at all, write me at once.”

“We’ll be alright,” Bobby said.

“Yes, bu--”

“We’ll write if we need anything,” Anne interjected. 

“And I’ll send for you to visit. Soon,” Dot promised.

“As long as it’s by train!” Anne said, looking over Dot’s shoulder at the plane.

The three of them hugged once more, then Dot turned and stepped towards the plane. Buster was waiting by the steps, arms crossed, smiling.

She felt larger than herself, grief and love and fear and guilt and excitement all swirling together inside of her all at once. It was so much, that it all seemed to converge into an odd sense of calm. She hesitated at the stairs up into the plane, the breeze pushing a tendril of hair over her forehead.

“Let’s go home, Dot.” Buster whispered into her ear, then kissed her neck.

She saw him glance back at Anne and Bobby for just a moment before he bent at the knee to scoop her up into his arms. Dot thought she heard Bobby hoot and Anne laughing as he carried her into the plane.

Her knuckles were white where she gripped the fabric of her skirt as the plane started up at Buster’s word to the pilot. She stared out the window, watching the grassy field whip by as they picked up speed. When the plane gave a start and suddenly the bumpy ride became terrifyingly smooth as the wheels lifted off the ground, Dot squeezed her eyes shut.

“Don’t be scared. Look.” Buster’s lips brushed against her ear and, against her instincts, she did as he said. 

Outside that small window, the world was falling away from them. Landmarks Dot recognized passed beneath them and her breath caught in her throat. Her hometown had never looked so small. 

Dot laughed, feeling as light as the air that rushed past, supporting them and propelling them forward, higher and higher. Tearing her eyes from the window, she turned to Buster who was at her shoulder, but his eyes had been on her all along.

“Are you alright?” He asked, eye glinting.

“Yes.” She nodded. “Yes.”

His smile widened and when he kissed her she threw herself into his warmth, holding on tight as they flew home, together.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for following my indulgent little re-imagining of a gentler life for our beloved Buster. I hope you liked it. <3


End file.
